


A lowering sky at dawn

by evil_whimsey



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 71,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_whimsey/pseuds/evil_whimsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at what might have fallen between the cracks, toward the end of Holic Rou.  Warning for spoilers, and character deaths implied.<br/>Rating may increase with future chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

_May the cuckoo's first song  
Banish my tears and ease  
My burdened heart under  
A lowering sky at dawn_

[The Confessions of Lady Nijou, Part 11 (1277)]

 

1

After Doumeki Shizuka's passing, Watanuki stops counting his birthdays. He continues to observe the seasons, the necessary rituals, knowing that somehow they benefit the world outside; the world he can only glimpse over the walls of the shop garden, and in the dreams of the customers who come to him, reeled in by the tendrils of their heart's yearnings.

He is conscious of time still passing in that world, but as he does not outwardly age, as his daily surroundings hardly change, it seems superfluous to mark the years behind these walls. Doumeki is sixty-eight, on the warm humid June morning when he draws his last breath. Watanuki feels the very moment of it, right where he's been sitting vigil on the engawa, so his first words when Doumeki Kohane calls him, before she is even able to speak on the line, are, "Yes. I know."

The conversation is a sudden well of empty silence, framed delicately by her thin, exhausted sigh at the end.

"I can bring Daisuke over....tomorrow. Maybe this time..."  
"It won't be necessary," Watanuki tells her gently. "But don't worry. Stay close with your family now. Come and visit, if you need to."

Their son Daisuke could not see the shop. And he never would, Watanuki knew. But he would be loyal to the family legacy, he would follow his parents' instructions to the letter. And Watanuki would go on doing what he could, to ensure their protection.

No sooner has he hung up the phone, than he catches a shadow out in the yard standing near the engawa. He walks out, crosses his arms and lifts an eyebrow at the black-haired figure standing there in white samue, holding a temple broom.

"How many times have I told you?" he asks Doumeki's ghost. "You know I can't stand it when you sneak in from the side."

The ghost doesn't answer, it only fixes on him, staring the way Doumeki always did and even after fifty-some years it still gets under Watanuki's skin a little. But he lets it go now, because he can. Because they're adults, and he's the Shopkeeper, and there are deep responsibilities here.

"Not like this, Doumeki," he shakes his head. "I know you know better."

Doumeki only stands there, faintly blurred and pale in the sun, but standing at attention, nonetheless. Watanuki sighs.

"So stubborn." He walks to the end of engawa, so they can see eye-to-eye. "This isn't your duty. I'll be fine. Everything will be taken care of." Then he leans forward, touching both hands to Doumeki's shoulders, looking past the unspoken wish in that obdurate gaze, because he has learned that some wishes are best never mentioned.

"There's nothing more for you to do, here. And I can't imagine you'd want your family to pay the price for you malingering about."

Though it appears to take an effort, Doumeki draws his brows to a frown, and tightens his grip on his broom. He wants to speak, Watanuki knows, and puts two fingers over Doumeki's lips, to seal the words inside.

That one gesture, he feels the cost of it inside himself, in the aching twist of his heart. But it's for the best. A desire unspoken will either grow in power, or it will fade, and if it fades over time, then it was never meant to be.

"It's time for you to let go, Doumeki Shizuka. Go in peace, and find where you belong." He speaks these words as the Shopkeeper, the custodian of fate's precarious balance. But when Doumeki finally obeys, turns, and heads off into the shimmering shadows near the garden gate; once he is departed, finally, for good, Watanuki murmurs, "Thank you. Thank you, Shizuka."

And in that moment he is only himself, feeling exhausted and broken, and too small for the many, many, many years he now sees spooling out before him, like an endless dusty road with only his shadow for company.

**

The seasons turn; summer to autumn to winter. Watanuki grants wishes, mends kimono, smokes Yuuko's kiseru, sits out on the long empty engawa with a lone sake cup, watching the moon rise and wax and wane and set. And the next he knows it's a gray still afternoon at the end of March, and Mokona is dropping hints about a birthday feast.

All at once, Watanuki remembers that birthday. His forty-second? Forty-fifth? When Kohane was at the temple taking care of her son's pneumonia, and Doumeki arrived alone, with a wrapped bento, a bottle of excellent rare sake, and a _cupcake_ , of all things, with a single candle planted in the middle.

He'd looked bone-weary, his jacket was rumpled, he had a shaving cut on his chin. And instead of eying the sad little cupcake askance and giving Doumeki hell over it, for whatever reason Watanuki had laughed and laughed. He permitted Doumeki to sit in the kitchen, while he cooked up a lot of this and that for Doumeki to take home, and then they sat out together and ate, and he accepted the sake as payment for the insight that Daisuke might have developed a mold allergy, and Doumeki _might_ care to hire a contractor to deal with the damp setting in, in all the rooms around the temple courtyard.

**

To this day, Watanuki can picture that cupcake. He can see Doumeki's sturdy fingers, pushing in the candle before he boxed it up. And though it's been months, even though Kohane has recovered enough to smile again, to stand and go forward, suddenly Watanuki does not feel so strong as that. What he feels is that blue waxy candle, pressing into his chest, blunt and deep past the bone.

"I think I'll make cupcakes, this year," he tells Mokona. And that's it, from that point on, he is done with his birthdays. Mokona frets, Kohane looks concerned when she visits and Watanuki loads her up with a few dozen cupcakes to share among her friends. Even Himawari calls to check on him.

He smiles and waves off their worries, because he can't explain it to any of them, and doesn't think it's wise to try. Doumeki is gone. He will never again bring Watanuki a cupcake with an incongruous candle stuck haphazardly in the middle. He will never dictate ridiculous menus, glare at Watanuki from under one arched brow, sneak in around the side of the house with groceries, no matter how many hundreds of times Watanuki has fussed at him to come in the front.

Doumeki is gone, and the hole he has left in Watanuki's life is so much bigger than any physical space he ever occupied, that it has taken Watanuki all these months to realize the true scope of it.

His birthday makes him too aware of this vertiginous emptiness, and that sticky, sultry afternoon when he sealed Doumeki's last wish, sending it away with his ghost, even though he could feel it reaching for him, and some traitorous selfish want in himself, struggling toward the surface to seize on it. If he is to live on, through however many ages to come, with any measure of peace, he reasons that the only way to do it, is to forgo his birthday altogether.

Checks and balances, wishes and prices; these aren't merely woven into his life, they are the very fabric of him. He accepts this now.

 

**


	2. Part 2

(2)

 

Doumeki Daisuke cannot see the shop. He has neither Haruka nor Kohane's gifts, nor any particular desire powerful enough to compel him there. However what he does have, is an unshakable sense of familial duty, and a peculiar knack for meeting people with wishes. So while Watanuki never meets him directly, he maintains his connection to the family through various intermediaries. Once dear Kohane passes (seventeen years after Shizuka, Watanuki makes a special note so he won't forget this), Watanuki has a steady string of customers who bring him groceries and household necessities, and deliver return packages to the Doumeki temple.

Three times in the span of ten years, he meets a customer who asks--without seeming to know why, as if they'd been requested to--whether he would like to leave this job and the shop behind, simply forget about them.

Each time, Watanuki is baffled at the question. Why should he want to leave? Well yes, of course he'd like a chance to walk outside in the world, buy his own produce, get a change of scenery. But being here is his price, waiting for Yuuko, it's what he promised, and what he's resolved upon. He's invested however many decades in it already, it would be foolish to give up now.

After the third time he dismisses the idea, no one asks again.

**

And so the years go. He cooks, he experiments with wine-making and gradually replenishes the Doumeki cellars, from all Haruka's stock that Shizuka paid out. He renews their wards, advises Daisuke through their intermediaries about his occasional premonitions, and receives in return quite an interesting selection of books and scrolls from Haruka's old library.

Unlike most payments, he chooses not to put these away in the shop's storeroom. They don't belong there, he feels strongly, though it takes him awhile to articulate why.

The things in the storeroom belong to Hitsuzen. One way or another, they are waiting to enter the fabric of someone else's destiny. But Haruka's collection is inextricably tied to the Doumeki family destiny. It was all his care, his intent, his devotion to his family's future legacy which brought these items together. And part of Watanuki's responsibility now, is to watch over that legacy.

In part, he knows he's repaying all the watching-over he got from Haruka and his grandson. But also, he eventually realizes, he's making good on the reassurance he sent Shizuka's ghost off with. He hadn't permitted Shizuka to make that wish; the least he can do now, is make room for Haruka's books and scrolls on the shelves in his own bedroom.

**

For some time Watanuki goes on believing he has made a heartfelt, respectful choice. He still has the fondest memories of Haruka, who never visited his dreams after Shizuka left, and when he sees those things in his room, occasionally trailing his fingers over the spines of the books, or carefully unrolling the scrolls, it warms him with old, long-held affection and a touch of wistfulness.

Needless to say he's a bit vexed to discover that Hitsuzen had been meddling around behind his back anyway, when nineteen-year-old Doumeki Haruka (a girl this time), arrives at the shop on a pristine white winter morning, and says she has a wish.

She brings an excellent white tea (with her father Daisuke's regards), but when she states her request, Watanuki is dismayed to feel the tipping of the scales beneath his heart, knowing there will be a price for this wish, and it's far more than a gift of tea can cover.

"My great-grandfather was my namesake," she tells him, looking up from the rim of her teacup with tawny pale eyes that at first had made Watanuki's heart do a strange little side-step in his chest. "All my life, my family have revered him. I've felt I would like to know him better, but the only way now is through his writings. His storehouse, in the back of the temple. Does Watanuki-sama know it?"

Watanuki smiles for her, and sighs for the memories. "I was there a few times. It was a long time ago."

"I'm going to university, to study art restoration and preservation. I hope I can learn to take care of great-grandfather's collection. Last year, I started an inventory of his storehouse."

Watanuki's smile goes wry. This girl is grave, and straightforward almost to the point of bluntness. She is without doubt a Doumeki, and though this may not make life easy for her in the outside world, Watanuki decides that he likes her for it.

"I can only imagine what a challenge that must have been," he murmurs into his tea. "Your grandfather never learned to clean anything properly. And your father...."

She stares a Doumeki stare at him, then tips her head slightly, as if truly taking him in, for the first time. "Father knows the things are valuable. But he doesn't--."

"Understand them?" Watanuki provides. And then knowing this Haruka cannot criticize her own father, he takes a gentler tack. "Your great-grandfather was a powerful, exceptionally gifted man. This shop, what you see around you, is as close as most people will ever come, to the world he could reach easily." He waits, while she gazes around her, as her pragmatism and curiosity vie for the upper hand.

When her eye stills on Mugetsu, curled asleep all this time on a cushion near Watanuki's knee, he adds, "Daisuke-san has never seen this place. He has lived up to his name, and his parent's wishes, and has been a great help to me. I am grateful for all he has done. But we've never met. He cannot see this shop, and never will."

She turns back to him. "I remember. When I was very young. Before I started school. Father brought me to this place one day. We stood across the street, and he asked me what I saw. But there was nothing to see. Only an empty lot, between the buildings."

"You had no need of my shop, then. Only humans with a need are able to see it." He sets down his teacup then, and straightens the cuff of each of his sleeves. "You are here, because you have a strong wish. If you tell me your wish, I will grant it. But I will tell you the price you must pay for it."

"Not money," she guesses.  
He nods, approving, because she understands. "The price must be equal to the wish. And I will warn you, that sometimes people find their wishes cost them too much. Still, they must pay in full."

"My wish." She frowns down at the table between them a moment, such a serious look, such a _Shizuka_ look, that it sneaks in and plucks a soft note from the strings of Watanuki's heart. "It doesn't seem so....great, as what Watanuki-sama speaks of."

"Every choice you make, every desire you act on, affects fate." For the finest tea he's tasted in fifteen years, he can advise her this much. "It changes your path, and the path of those around you. Like dropping a stone into a pond, you see?"

She listens, nods once, and for the first time this girl Haruka looks uncertain. "I only want....there are some things missing, from great-grandfather's storeroom. Father says he sent them here, in payment for your help with the temple."

Oh.

Watanuki folds his hands in his lap, momentarily snagged on the still-painful crux between Shopkeeper and just himself. The Shopkeeper must fulfill the wish, if payment can be made. But Watanuki remembers Haruka, that serene comforting presence sitting next to him in dreams, the warmth of his voice, his smile. There was always something about that smile, how it used to nudge up against the wish-making place inside him, however well he learned to guard its doors.

"Your wish, is to have those things returned," he concludes softly, even though it aches to say it. He can't afford an attachment to Haruka's books and scrolls, not if Hitsuzen intends to send them elsewhere.

And though the girl can't possibly understand what's at work inside him now, she looks apologetic. "I've felt, for some time, that great-grandfather's artifacts should be together. I've been saving my money, doing what I can to restore his storeroom. So everything in it can be preserved. So it doesn't go to ruin."

It is a good wish. Devoted and unselfish, one of the rarest kind. But now Watanuki must look for the shifts it will make, the ripples in the pond of her fate, and her family's destiny, to ascertain the cost.

And that cost, he soon perceives, will not be simple.

"I hope you understand," he tells her after a moment. "That I would rather be able to simply give you the things you ask for. They are your family's. They were Haruka-san's, and he was someone dear to me. It does not please me, that I must ask a price of you, for them. Unfortunately....I am not at liberty to decide such things."

"What is this price? If I can pay it, I will."

It is complex, Watanuki knows that right away, and he needs a moment to turn it over, study the lines and angles and ramifications, so he can properly explain it. The price for the girl's wish will dictate the course of her whole life, it will tie her to the shop for a long time, he suspects. The least he can do is try to prepare her.

"I will explain it, but would you mind taking a walk with me, first? There's something....I believe I should show you."

The girl looks nonplussed; if he hadn't known Shizuka so long, Watanuki would've thought it was only a blank stare, but he recognizes this look, and in that instant he understands more about her than he would necessarily have liked to. She is a solitary sort; her stoic disposition is (for reasons he still can't fathom) considered attractive in high school boys, but for girls it is a very different matter. It's made her an outsider, one with very few--if any--friends. Invitations and dates would have been scarce and far between, despite that she is dependable, punctual, the most level-headed and responsible among her peers. But somehow he knows, that not a single one of them has ever seen her laugh.

"Please," she nods, adding politely, "I'm sorry for troubling you."

Well that was something Shizuka would never have said, and instead of sighing for her, Watanuki offers his warmest smile. It makes her blink, and this pleases him obscurely. "It's so rare I have guests anymore. Thank you for indulging me."

**

He leads her to the storeroom, and pauses with a hand on the door a moment, to make sure this will be all right. The storeroom was never properly a room in a house at all, however it appears most days, and once in a while he's found it reverted to a very different state; the sort of place where any person with less power than himself would not want to intrude.

But today, he feels, it's only an ordinary room, safe for visitors. "I should tell you, that most people never come in here. The only person besides myself, and Yuuko-san---the former shopkeeper--who've come here, was your grandfather Shizuka-san."

"Grandmother told me that you, and your shop, were very important to Grandfather," she tells him, before peering into the dim room he has opened for her. "Oh. Oh my."

He shouldn't be surprised that she's immediately captivated by all the shelves and trunks, and neatly ordered stacks of items, all perfectly clean and dust-free for a change. When she's not looking, he offers a sly wink up toward the corner rafters, at the room putting on its best face for a visitor. Perhaps he only imagines it, but he would swear the place is preening back at him.

"So many artifacts. And books." Haruka keeps her hands folded politely behind her, but Watanuki knows she wants to touch and inspect each little thing.

"Some of these things were here before my time," he offers. "Some of them have come to me as payments, or gifts."

"You never use them? Never sell them? Ah, this mirror. I saw one just like it in a museum catalogue, once."

"They are sisters," Watanuki nods. "Some day, perhaps this one will go out again."  
She turns, tilting her head at him in that curious searching way, which Watanuki is quickly coming to find endearing, and then he realizes she's waiting on answers to her question.

"Sometimes these items will grant a customer's wish. Some of them, I use in order to grant a wish. But they are in no way mine. This place," he gestures around him, "is more of a way-station. It's a place where things are taken care of, until the time comes for them to fulfill a purpose. All I do really, is store them."

Looking back at the gilt frame on the mirror, she frowns a little. "But is it all right, keeping it all hidden away, like this?"

"It's for the best," he assures her. "None of these objects is ordinary. Each of these things has a....a weight in the world. One way or another, they will affect someone's fate. Or fulfill a certain destiny."

"Ripples in a pond," she murmurs, and there, Watanuki knows. The price of her wish will not be easy, but it will be necessary. She has that grasp on fate and balances and far-reaching consequences, which so few people ever realize. It is right, that she has come here. And the role she will play, in payment for her wish, no other person will suit it so well.

"Is this where you've kept Great-Grandfather's writings?" she asks, eyes still roaming the shelves, with a look almost too reminiscent of how Shizuka used to eye his bento.

"No. As I said, these things are not mine. I have no attachment with them at all. But Haruka-san's belongings were different. They are special, to me." When his confession draws her straight amber gaze on him again, he gestures toward to door. "It's cold in here," he smiles. "I'll take you back inside, and bring the things from my room."

**

Once she's seated in the rear parlor, he goes back to his bedroom, to retrieve Haruka's books and scrolls from their special shelf. He permits himself a moment to simply cradle them against his chest, remembering the companionship, the reassurance of Haruka's guidance. His pleasant low voice, the way he squinted at Watanuki, not quite winking (but there was definitely a twinkle there in his eye), through the curl of his tobacco smoke.

He was able to admit a long time ago, that he had loved Haruka. And that love sat in a risque, mischievous place between 'adopted family', 'lifelong friends', and the secret warm-cheeked ' _hmm, I wonder..._ ' brought on by Haruka's occasional shameless flirting. But it was agreeable, comforting, and in the years following Shizuka's death, Watanuki was doubly bereft at losing the both of them.

He must not cling to these last reminders, he knows. Haruka is still in his heart, in every wise word and lesson he shared with Watanuki. And out of respect for that friendship, Watanuki must honor what Haruka and his great-great granddaughter would want. It's for the best, it's for that family's future, which he has vigilantly protected all these years.

But he can't help feeling forlorn, and looks to the now-empty shelf, wondering what could possibly replace what he has kept there.

Oh but wait....there's something already there. He hadn't seen it when he'd picked up the books.

Shifting the items to his hip, he leans over, and plucks up this small, unassuming object.   
"Hm," he tells the ribbon, dangling from his fingertips. "Don't I just wonder, how you got there." The answer is Hitsuzen, of course. And of course he knows just what it's for.

**

"Are you ready to know the price?" he asks the girl Haruka, after she's had a chance to gaze over the things he'd brought out, trailing a gentle finger down the spine of one book, just as he has done so many times.

"Watanuki-sama has taken such excellent care of them," she remarks. "I am glad now, that Father sent them to this place." Then she straightens, and meets his eyes. "The cost will be steep, won't it."

"In some ways, yes," Watanuki admits. "But if you are truly dedicated to knowing your great-grandfather, and caring for what he left behind, then I don't think you will regret it so much." Here he pulls out the ribbon from his sleeve; a short length of thin red silk cord. This was often the way, with the more abstract costs for wishes; they came with a token, a small object of influence, to represent the price.

"You've heard before, about the red cord of Fate, I'm sure," he begins, and now he is the Shopkeeper, the aura of it spreading about him, whispering knowledge into his ear. For the moment, considering what he's giving up, he is grateful to slip into this mantle, and leave the human frailties of Watanuki Kimihiro aside.

The girl--now she is the Customer, a node in the spokes and web of fate--nods, silent, but her gaze remains unflinching. She understands her role now too, he thinks approvingly.

"The price for your wish, is your fate. The future course of your life. Before you came here, that course could have led you anywhere. But if I grant your wish--" and here he holds up the length of cord between his fingertips, holding it straight, so she can see, "--then your course will be fixed. You will be bound to accept the conditions I tell you. Even if it means sacrifice, even if it means strife for you later on."

Here, she frowns. "I don't understand. You mean I will be bound to you?"

"No," Watanuki shakes his head. "You will be bound to your family's legacy. To the Doumeki temple, to all the knowledge your great-grandfather collected, for the remainder of your life. You will be responsible for carrying on the family name and bloodline, and to raise your children to understand what this means."

The girl studies the red cord between them, unafraid, but pensive. Measuring.

"My grandmother used to tell me about Watanuki-sama. She told me that sometimes your prices seemed very high, but they were always exactly equal to the wish."

At this, Watanuki can't help a small chuckle. "Kohane-chan was too generous. She knew me when I was still learning. She knew there were times I did not always find the appropriate price."

"And what happened, then?"  
"Nature always demands balance. If there is an inequity, something has to make up the difference." He gives a little lopsided smile, at the memory of scars, burns, broken bones, all long faded, but for the lesson of them. "Back then, if I made an error, I had to make up the difference."

Haruka's eyes widen slightly, and stray toward the dead, curled little finger on his right hand. And because he is watching her eyes closely, because you always had to watch a Doumeki's eyes so carefully to get any idea of their thoughts, he sees the moment when it dawns on her, when it all clicks into place.

"Is it--am I allowed to know, if Watanuki-sama is paying a price like this too?"  
"I am," he says. "I have been. All this time."

"And is it....Watanuki-sama has no regrets?"

Her questions are good. Her examination of the price, making sure she understands all the ramifications, is laudable. He wants to believe that this bargain will lead her into a place she's exactly suited for, where she will perhaps be most happy, but of course he cannot promise that. Nothing can promise that.

Then he looks down at these last tokens of the Haruka he had loved, whom he thinks he misses now more than ever before, and seeks the best, truest answer he can give her. "I can't tell you there are no regrets. But my choice, I don't regret that. I believe my wish was right, and my payment is fitting. I can still live with it. I would still make the same choice again."

She studies the room around them; the walls, the beams of the rafters, his little wooden pipe-box, left near the door to the engawa, where outside Watanuki knows a soft powdery snow is drifting down.

"I have a brother, Shoutarou," she mentions. "Mother has assumed all along that he would inherit the temple. But he prefers baseball. He has many friends. He wants to study veterinary medicine. I think Father will understand, if I ask to take over the temple. But with Mother. She worries, that I never mention boyfriends, or going out. She thinks I'm only going through a phase, with great-grandfather's storeroom."

Watanuki nods understanding. "Unfortunately, I can't advise you further, without incurring further debt. I'm sorry. But you are beginning to see correctly, what the cost of your wish means. There will be difficulties. It will not always be easy."

"But you have done it. And my grandfather and grandmother paid for wishes in this shop too, and still you were always very important to them. My father has never met you, and yet he never makes a serious decision, without considering whether it will affect what our family can do for you."

"Daisuke-san seems like a very good man," says Watanuki, touched by this knowledge, and so very proud of Shizuka for what he'd given his son. "I am sorry we've never had the chance to meet."

"I will pay the price for my wish," the girl tells him, with the air of one who has fixed all their courage to the sticking point. "Please tell me what I must do."

He lets the words hang on the air a moment, affording them the space they deserve for their power and gravity. Words are important, Yuuko had taught him. He had learned on his own, that they were just as important in those mysterious tipping points, dwelling in the pauses between their utterance.

Again, as he has so many times, he remembers his fingers on Shizuka's lips. And again, he wonders briefly what has happened with that sealed wish, whether it will ever find its way back to him.

And then he knows the moment has ripened, and the time for the payment has arrived.   
"Please hold out your right hand," he says, in the Shopkeepers voice.

When her small pale hand is steady before him, he brings up the red silk cord, and loops it around her little finger. Once, twice, three times. Tight enough not to slip, tight enough that she will be aware of it, for a very long time to come.

Once he has looped the cord, and made a small neat knot, he lays the palm of his hand over hers. "No one will see this but you and I. You must wear it always, to bind your life to what you have promised. If you should ever take it off, all I can tell you is that the consequences will be terrible. Do you understand these terms, Doumeki Haruka?"

"I understand," she says. Her voice is sure, but for the first time, her cheeks have gone pale.

When he removes his hand, the cord has become a ring of shiny crimson, with a simple knot like an obijime.

"Your wish has been granted."

**

Hours after the girl Haruka has gone, with the package of her grandfather's precious possessions carefully bundled in her arms, Watanuki feels tired, in a way he hasn't felt in years.

And yet he cannot sleep. Does not want to be in his room, particularly. Instead he bundles up and sits out on the engawa, watching the night shadows dusted across the marble-white snow on the lawn. He smokes, and smokes, and then thinks he wants something stronger.

Mokona shows up then, with a bottle of aged Scotch whisky, pours out two glasses, and sits next to Watanuki in utter silence. Watanuki sips at the first glass, pours them each a second serving. When that one is done, he looks sidelong at Mokona, a tiny blurry shape past the rim of his spectacles.

"Nice try," he mentions. "But I'm afraid it's not the same."  
"Mokona could roll a cigarette," his companion offers, and this earns a bruised chuckle from Watanuki.

"There's no replacing them," he says. "I always knew that."  
"Has Watanuki ever tried to meet with them, in his dreams?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "That's too close to a wish. And they've been at rest for so long. It would be selfish of me, to disturb them."

"Watanuki still misses them, Doumeki and his grandfather."  
"I _miss_ them," he agrees, sighing with the ragged old burden of it.  
"Would they be happy, where they are now?"

"Well. I can't say Shizuka would be all that happy with _me_. But he was always too difficult to please. Stubborn," he sniffs.

Somewhere toward the bottom the bottle, Watanuki decides he can probably sleep, and tilts off for the bedroom in a negligent haze, shedding his kimono on the way. He collapses in the dark across the sheets, then fumbles his way underneath, shivering, thinking he hasn't been this drunk in ages. Not since that spell after Shizuka died, when he thought that maybe drinking enough for the both of them might help fill up the yawning chasm inside and all around him.

Of course it hadn't, and after enough brutal hangovers, he gave it up.

He is aware, at some point later on, of Maru, Moro, and Mokona all creeping into the bed with him, nestling in close and quiet. In the clumsy readjustment of knees and elbows and ears to accommodate everyone, he forgets to be conscious of that empty shelf nearby. Soon after everyone is finally settled, he slides off into deep, dreamless sleep.

**

And so the years pass.

 

**


	3. Part Three

(3)

 

The granddaughter Haruka is true to her word, and takes over for Daisuke's client-intermediaries, whenever she can. She is busy with college, learning the duties of the temple, and restoring her great-grandfather's storehouse. Often as not, she comes by looking so worn and thin, with shadows under her amber eyes. But her gaze is still resolute, and Watanuki does what he can to reassure her that all her efforts are valuable, much needed, and worthy of respect.

Where Daisuke's talent was finding people with wishes, his daughter's gift is for discovering artifacts. She comes across them in antique stores, flea markets, photos in her class textbooks.

Being a college student, and putting all her extra money into the family storehouse, of course she cannot afford to bring him all the things she finds. But she takes photos, and brings those to share with him, and Watanuki can tell her, yes, this object is powerful, the owner should be careful of it. Or he'll say no, this is not the significant item, it's this thing here (pointing to something barely visible at the edge of the frame), but you were close.

He allows part of the tutelage as a necessary bonus for her wish-payment. But there are occasions when he is forced to tuck his hands in his sleeves, and smile regretfully at her. The first few times, she frowns a Shizuka frown; not at him, so much, as at finding a door closed to her. And then, as he had hoped, she takes her unanswered questions and turns them to motivation, redoubling her own research efforts, expanding her knowledge of artifacts into history, folklore, archaeology, with a determination that even surpasses her grandfather, Professor Doumeki Shizuka, PhD.

Her industriousness does not go unnoticed. At least twice a year, she mentions turning down opportunities in her field. An internship in Egypt; a three-year grant to help rescue murals on an ancient site in Patagonia. She is only just beginning to see it, the full measure of the price she'd agreed to pay, and they both know it.

Usually on these occasions, Watanuki will send her out with a grocery list, and when she returns, he will hand her an apron and instruct her to wash her hands. "I'm going to teach you to make inarizushi, the way Shizuka-san liked it," he might tell her. Or maybe it would be kushiyaki, or ozoni. Growing up in the Doumeki temple, she had little need of coaching on these recipes. But this is one of the few avenues where Watanuki can indirectly impart advice, without incurring cost.

He does what he can, but he can only do so much. One night she arrives late, eyes red-rimmed and angry, and when she presses a package into his hands in the entryway, he sees her little finger on her right hand is chafed raw from the crimson ring.

"My mother. She's becoming....impossible. I just--all my money for the month, I saw this and thought..."

"Ah." Watanuki unwraps the package; two cartons of top-grade tobacco, and a set of special silk pipe cleaners. "I was just about to enjoy a drink out back. Why don't you stay and join me."

The kizami tobacco is excellent, with the cognac they share. As usual, Haruka has chosen well.  
After their first glasses are empty, and the tense set of Haruka's shoulders has loosened a little, Watanuki sets aside his smoking kit, and crosses his legs.

"So. Your mother?"

Haruka stares out toward the garden wall. "She's arranged an omiai. She says if I won't take my career seriously, if I insist on living at home, then I might as well marry."

"You do have the right to refuse," he mentions. "It won't make your mother very happy, but."

"But my price." She looks down to the ring on her smallest finger. "Marriage is part of that."  
"Hm. And you bring me some very good tobacco....for what?"

Haruka bites her lip a moment, an uncharacteristically hesitant gesture for her, before pulling out a long envelope from somewhere inside her jacket, and laying it on the tray between them.

"Can Watanuki-sama, could I ask for....kagemi."

"You want me to look in on this person? Tell you about their character?" He lifts an amused eyebrow at her cleverness, always examining a contract from every possible side.

But then he remembers another girl appearing to him, years upon years ago, pleading for him to fix her a match with Shizuka, and suddenly he is not so amused. "I can do what you ask. I will do my best. But it will take a few days. And I will have to ask you for something more."

She looks at the tobacco boxes with something close to despair. All her month's' money, she'd said, and so Watanuki adds, "It won't be something to buy. You will have it already, when you come back here."

"...Oh. All right."

**

Three days later she is back to hear his verdict. Watanuki had gone through the motions of studying the candidate's photograph, his resume, writing out their names and birthdays together on paper, and because she had asked especially, he visited the candidate's sleep through a dream.

Only to find the man nestled close, content and comfortable, with another man in his bed.

Watanuki is neither shocked, nor particularly surprised. After all he's seen over the decades, he isn't sure much could surprise him anymore. But although he's learned what he needs, and has no need to linger (and still is uncomfortable with these intrusions), he does stay a minute or so more than necessary. Just watching them sleep. The candidate has a pleasing face, and with his partner, there is a peace about him which wasn't evident from his photograph.

And Watanuki wonders. Because he can't help it. What a peace like that would feel like. The simple human comfort, of going through the night with someone dear to him, embracing them. Sharing the rhythm of breath. The closest he's ever come, were his dreams sitting next to Haruka. Or when Shizuka used to stay the night at the shop; his soft snores in the next room over.

Once he realizes where this train of thought is taking him, he departs the place. Awakens on the sofa, and then spends the rest of the night sitting on the front porch, smoking his fresh top-grade tobacco, and sipping a light, sweet brandy. It doesn't relieve his loneliness, but at least it dulls the edges for awhile.

**

"This person is decent, with many good qualities," he tells Shizuka's granddaughter. "But I cannot say that he is suitable for you." In truth, the match wouldn't be a blessing for either of them, and Watanuki can only hope that things will somehow work out better for the man he'd watched sleeping.

Haruka takes a deep breath, lets it out, but he can't tell whether the drop in her shoulders is relief or disappointment. It's possible that she doesn't know either. "Thank you. I thought I should be sure. Now will Watanuki-sama ask the rest of the price?"

As when they had first met, Watanuki sits back and studies her. Straight black hair, eyes so sharp, somber mouth. Only a few times in their acquaintance has he seen her close to a smile. He's never yet seen her laugh.

He looks at the ring, still secure on her red, scraped little finger. Not once, in the seven years she's worn it, has she ever complained. She does not twist at it, does not worry it between her fingers, the way women sometimes do. Even now, though she cannot help but be conscious of it, with all the discomfort it gives her lately, she takes no outward notice of it at all.

He looks deeper, then. At the space surrounding her, the back-waves of the ripples she has made with that years-old wish. He sees how the red line of her fate leads taut, straight for the door of the shop, instead of curling, meandering and twisting the way it does for most people.

And then he sees what he's been searching for. A firefly-glimmer of gold, up near her head.

"That hairpin you're wearing," he says. Straightaway her fingers go to it, a gold dragonfly barrette, with enamel inlay.

"This?" She unfastens it, hesitating the merest instant, before holding it out to him. He takes it, curls it in his palm, and feels the faintest thrum against his skin.

"Someone gave you this, awhile ago."  
"A....a friend," she nods, and then gives the slightest shrug. "A professor I had, last year. My hair, when I was studying, it was always hanging in my face...." She trails off, caught up in a private memory, perhaps.

"You should catch up with that person," he tells her. "Something tells me you have a connection with them."

A single blink is all that gives away her startlement. "I--I see. Thank you, as always, Watanuki-sama."

She is bemused, when he sees her out the door, but Watanuki knows, for two boxes of tobacco and a keepsake whose sentimental value she would never have admitted, she will find something of worth, soon.

**

 

 

Author's note: For more information on the custom of Omiai or Kagemi, Wikipedia provides a [ good overview.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miai#Miai)


	4. Part Four

(4)

 

He brews chrysanthemum wine. Draws stacks of ofuda for the Doumeki temple, and Haruka's storehouse. Renews his wardrobe from a customer's payment of antique fabric bolts. He grants wishes, great and small, and once in awhile he tries a new arrangement of objects on that shelf in his bedroom. Flowers, knicknacks, various books he finds lying around. But no matter what he puts there, nothing ever quite seems to satisfy that space.

Haruka marries her professor, who is all too happy to adopt the Doumeki family name, and becomes an avid student of Daisuke and Haruka herself, about the responsibilities of the temple and the family line. From then on, Watanuki sees less of her, and more of Daisuke's customers (now in his retirement, the man seemed to be running across them constantly).

Though he and Haruka had never become close, precisely, Watanuki had developed a fondness for her company, and there come days when he distinctly feels the lack of it. He tries to console himself with the thought that she must be satisfied, settled in finally, and no longer requires his help so much. But the comfort from that thought never seems to last.

**

One night, at the end of a week involving a particularly depressing customer, he dreams of Shizuka.

They are in that park they used to frequent during high school, dressed in their old uniforms and seated on the grass, each of them with pairs of knitting needles, working away at an immense afghan. Watanuki knows this is no supernatural vision, no ghostly visitation from beyond. For one thing, Shizuka looks exactly as he had in high school. For another, he cannot for the life of him imagine the man knitting anything, in this world or the next.

Still, Watanuki is overjoyed, and expresses it by bickering endlessly about Shizuka's stitches, his choice of yarns, the bits of grass he's getting all over their project.

"Look," he points out. "What is this here, you've dropped this entire row right down the middle! What am I supposed to do with that?"

Shizuka's needles stop clicking, and he stares up so brazenly that Watanuki's mouth goes dry. "That," he says, with all the condescending curtness of old, "hasn't happened yet. Did you even look at the pattern?"

Watanuki looks, following the missing row of stitches down, down, until he has to get up and walk the length of the knitting to see where it leads. The pattern thins out as he goes, whole chunks of stitches missing, until finally it's nothing but a collection of long loose ends curling through the grass.

"But....what are we supposed to do with all this?" he calls back to Shizuka. Only now it's Shizuka's grandfather, Haruka, taking a break with the needles in his lap, to light up his cigarette.

"The question, Kimihiro, is what will _you_ do with all of it." And this time, no mistake, he winks at Watanuki. "At the point you're standing now, it's only you."

He walks back up the knitting, this time on Haruka's side, taking his time and looking carefully for a pattern. Here, he sees the gold dragonfly of the girl Haruka's hairpin. Here, the silk cord of her crimson ring, with threads running down, down to the unfinished loose ends. Throughout the pattern, from top to bottom, there are lacy black butterflies, woven in with smoke-gray threads, moon-silver, snow white and spring green.

A short distance from Haruka, the whole width of the pattern is overtaken by dark charcoal, the muted brown of withered autumn leaves, shot through with dull waxy blue, the exact color of Shizuka's cupcake candle.

They're knitting time. His time. Both alone and entangled with those he has known. Where he'd left Shizuka, there's a pattern of arrow fletching, in the same moss green yarn of those gloves he'd made, the ones Shizuka wore for years, until they fell apart. Where Haruka has left off, it's tobacco tan and twilight blue, spotted with the pale silken shapes of sakura blossoms. Here he knees, at Haruka's side.

"This is nice. Nice work." He reaches out to touch the weave, the pleasing complexity of it. "This is only my dream, right? I mean, you aren't really here."

"This dream is yours," Haruka nods, and his smile is not broad, but it's warm. Comforting.

Watanuki sighs. "Well then. That's all right." And because it's only his dream; there's no cost or consequence to account for here, he sits and tilts over until he's leaning against Haruka's arm, and rests his head on Haruka's shoulder.

He looks at the missing row of stitches, running down the center from here to where the yarn runs out; to his unresolved future, he supposes. "I wonder what goes in there. It must be something important."

"Something you've been missing a long time," muses Haruka.  
"I've been missing you a long time. I thought someday it would stop."  
"And you've missed Shizuka."

"And I've missed Shizuka," Watanuki nods. His eye travels from moss green to a pattern of bright sunflower yellow. "And Himawari-chan. Her daughter became a trauma surgeon, y'know."

"You told me that."

"But I didn't get to tell you about her grandson. He went into the Coast Guard, in the helicopter rescues. He saved many people, and got a special plaque for his retirement. That would have made her so happy." Again Watanuki reaches out, trailing his fingers from twilight and sakura petals, to the fuzzy knotted charcoal and brown; all those years of bleakest loss. "There's so much, that I don't get to tell any of you. And it still hurts. Every time I think that, it hurts."

There are tears now, smarting at his eyes, blurring the yarn and green grass to a bright smear in his lashes. Under his ear comes a heavy sigh, an unmistakably put-upon sigh, and then with no warning, Shizuka is dabbing messily at Watanuki's eyes with the corner of his sleeve.

"Ow, not so rough." He pushes Shizuka's hand aside, but leaves his head where it is.

"Dumbass," mutters Shizuka, bringing his arm up around Watanuki's shoulders, and Watanuki sniffs and nudges him with an elbow.  
"Hey. Show a little respect to your elders."

"Oi. Look." Of course Shizuka wasn't embracing him, he was rudely _pointing_ down the course of the knitted patterns, toward where they raveled out in the distance. "You told me not to hang around. Don't you linger here, either."

 _Hmph. Still touchy about that, are we?_ thinks Watanuki. But he looks where Shizuka's finger points, and since all of this is really only going on in his own head, he _gets_ the point.

The knitting of his life is still in progress. And there are still other people, in the pattern of it. Living people he can share things with, and who still have much to share with him. If he cloaks himself in the past, he'll miss the present. And whatever belongs in that dropped center row of stitches, he isn't likely to discover it by sitting around here.

"Fine," he groans, pushing up off Shizuka's shoulder, sitting up straight on his own. "But I won't ever forget. And you." He turns to sit on his knees, so he can look Shizuka right in the eyes. "Wherever you are, you had damn well better not forget, how important you are to me."

Shizuka gazes back, with that steady look Watanuki associates more with his granddaughter now. Although....the longer they stare at each other, the more Watanuki sees something subtly different. A look that isn't entirely Shizuka, or either generation of Harukas. It's an intent look, a look with a wish, powerful and long-held, waiting in its depths.

"Not ever," comes the answer, carried on a force that jolts Watanuki awake, breathless and wide-eyed in his sun-soaked bed.

**

It's the night before Valentine's, late, and Watanuki is sipping a delicious Sanctus Bordeaux and making a batch of chocolate fondant, partly to entertain himself, and partly because he'd gotten one of those feelings, late in the afternoon, that one way or another some chocolate fondant was going to turn out useful.

So when he heads out from the kitchen in search of the twins, or some more kitchen towels, or all three, he isn't terribly surprised to see Haruka slipping off her shoes in the entry, darting him an apologetic glance.

"It's terribly late, I'm so sorry. The children, tonight..."  
Watanuki is feeling cheerful at the prospect of company, and perhaps a little tipsy; he beams at her. "Please, no apologies. Haruka-chan is perfectly on time. I think I must have been expecting you, tonight."

"....Ah. I see." Then she raises her head and sniffs, and her eyes widen. "You're making chocolate, at this hour?"

"It should be done in a little while. Come in and get comfortable. Here, your coat--Maru? Moro? We have a guest," he calls. He takes her coat and scarf, expecting the girls any second. But he and Haruka are halfway to the back parlor, before he realizes they aren't coming.

"Hm. Sleeping," he murmurs absently, before seeing Haruka comfortably settled, and going to put away her coat and scarf himself.

"I brought something." Haruka retrieves a broad, flat package from her purse, once they're seated together. "Because I have....I hope to ask Watanuki-sama's advice. It would please me to give it to you as a gift, but..."

But he is the Shopkeeper. And gifts to him mean an obligatory trade. Watanuki's cheer deflates a little, as he regards the package. Honestly, he didn't feel at all like tallying rates of exchange tonight. "Hm. And here I was, hoping to give you something to take home," he smiles, a little crookedly.

"Oh. Well then I could--"  
"No, no need to worry about it. Tell me your request, and we'll see how it turns out."

Haruka frowns down at her hands, clasped in her lap, the fingers of the left hand brushing over the knuckles of the right. In many ways the years have been kind to her; she has grown into her quiet stoicism, the way many teenagers grow into gangly limbs and over-large ears. She carries a serene strength about her now, and what was once an almost too-intense focus has become steady, quiet authority.

Except for tonight. Tonight she is troubled, deeply enough that he can see it plain, and for the first time in his recollection, he sees her fingertips rubbing softly over the crimson ring she wears.

Ah. And now he understands.

"All this time," she says quietly. "I've married, I've carried on the family line. The temple succession. All the things Watanuki-sama said, as the cost of my wish. And yet still." She holds out her hand, so they both can look at the ring.

"Have I done something wrong? Is there something I've left undone?" She looks up to him now, as close to pleading as he's ever seen her, or any Doumeki.

Twice, over the last seven years, he's spotted her across the street from the shop. First holding the hand of her son Kiyoshi, and then later her daughter, Shiori. Both times, when their eyes had met, Haruka sighed and shook her head minutely, and Watanuki gave a tiny shrug, and a smile back.

They were only children, he'd told her later, reminding her that she hadn't seen the shop until she was nineteen, and had a strong need.

Now he leans forward, clasps her hands between his in a comforting gesture. He doesn't even need to exert his abilities, to feel the nature of her ring, how it still binds her. Snug, though not so tightly as it once did. "It's been a long time, for you," he says. "Do you find you have regrets, now?"

"No, I....no. It's only that. Half of my life, almost. And I thought by now, surely."

Watanuki nods, understanding. When Shizuka died, and night after night, Haruka never came back. When Himawari passed, and Kohane. Surely, he had thought. _Surely_ by now, Yuuko could come back, and end his waiting.

"Can I ask Haruka-chan." He releases her hand gently, and sits back. "Do you remember your wish, in your heart, what you truly wanted most when you came here?"

"I wanted to know my great-grandfather. I wanted--to understand, the person that he was. Grandmother never knew him. Grandfather....it was, for him, difficult to speak about, I think."

"Shizuka missed him terribly," Watanuki nodded, remembering that silent, remote boy he had first known. Seeing him now through the lens of memory, sharpened by experience; how lonely Shizuka must have been. To have such a man as Haruka in his life, and then to lose him so young.

Having lost them both, having had generations to miss them, Watanuki now understands to his bones, the awful emptiness Shizuka must have endured in those years.

"And did you learn?" he asks the woman now. "Have you come to know your great-grandfather as you wished?"

Haruka's eyes go distant, considering. "He was....brilliant. Generous, and honorable. And he gave so much care to the future. In his writings, his records, everything he left behind, he had--it's as though he had his eye on all of us, the Doumeki family now, and our parishioners. As though he could foresee..."

Watanuki listens to her speak, the dedication and wonder of years, in her voice. Every hour she spent alone in study, every outside opportunity forsaken, every Yen she scraped and saved so the storehouse behind the temple could stand for decades to come, a sanctuary in its own right.

And yet beneath all this, he still hears her yearning. The heart of her wish, the bare essence of it, has not yet been met. The wish and the price are still tipping in the scales of balance.

He can feel the two in suspension, teetering ever so quietly, and the more he listens--to her voice, to her feeling, to the softly beating heart of her wish--he begins to perceive. What she truly wants, is what only a person who had known her great-grandfather personally, could have experienced.

Watanuki himself had barely known that aspect of Haruka; never more than on the night he'd first dreamt of an archer on horseback, sitting straight and proud, shooting unerringly to destroy a malevolent spirit.

This, he suddenly realizes, is the Doumeki Haruka she has been seeking. And now Watanuki is seized with a fearful uncertainty he hasn't felt in so long, he'd almost forgotten what it was like.

Because he can't give her that. The shop can't give her that. Wishes can't raise the dead, and even if they could, it would be the one wish that should never, never be granted.

"...ki-sama? I'm so sorry..." Startled out of his worrisome musings, he blinks at her.  
"I beg your pardon?"  
"Your kitchen timer. Forgive me, I didn't think you'd heard it."

"Kitchen....? Ah! Yes, right, please excuse me." He hurries off to rescue the fondant, wondering where his help has gotten off to, wondering how he could possibly have bargained a wish that couldn't come true, how could all these years have passed, he should have known by now, he always knew when the wish exceeded what a customer could pay, especially with a plain impossibility...

Somehow he manages not to burn himself with the oven; drizzling the melted chocolate on top, a sugared violet for garnish, his hands moving purely by rote, while his mind spins and spins around a length of red silk cord, woven through years of their lives, a lifeline, a guideline to lead her--.

Thankfully he's holding the pot over the sink already when the answer knocks him hard between the eyes, and his hands go slack, and he doesn't even hear the clamoring metal.

He doesn't know how long he stares toward the wall behind the sink, seeing nothing but that red cord, threaded down through the knitting of his life, in that dream--three? Four years ago? Walking up the length of those yarns, he'd caught a glimpse that something about her wish was twined far into his future. Farther than he could see, all the way down to the loose ends of his destiny, where the first hints of any pattern to come had yet to take shape.

Whatever that sign means, it's still too far ahead for him to name it. But when he returns to Haruka, bearing a tray with a dessert and a small glass of wine for each of them, he feels--for no reason he can explain--that there is cause for hope in this case.

"I'm so sorry you had to wait," he smiles. "I was thinking about your question, and got distracted. Please forgive me."

"Everything's all right?" She must have heard the noise in the kitchen, because she's eying him closely as he sits.

"Yes. I think it is. I think, if you can bear your price a little longer, everything will be all right. Now, you look like you've worked hard today, and you've been worried. I don't want to impose if you're tired, but would you mind enjoying this small treat with me?"

And Haruka does look tired, but she agrees gracefully, and he can tell from her first bite of the fondant that she doesn't regret it a bit.

"Oh--oh this is extraordinary." Her eyes widen with a wonder he hasn't seen since that day, fourteen years ago, when she'd first set foot in the shop's storeroom. That expression alone, Watanuki thinks, is payment enough for his labor. It's a look he sees so seldom anymore; another person taking enjoyment from something he has made, and among all the many other things, he misses this acutely.

In between bites of his own fondant, he decides aloud that clarifying the terms of a wish still in payment, does not in this case incur any extra debt. What they should trade instead, for the parcel she's brought, is the fondant she's having now, and an extra to take home to her husband.

"After all, it's Valentines," he says. But then when he opens the parcel at her invitation, discovering the first edition of the book she had written and published about her great-grandfather's collection, with photographs and color plates and everything, he knows right away that he owes her more.

"I wanted Watanuki-sama to have the first copy," she tells him, with an expression that it actually takes him a moment to identify as shyness. "It's only a minor catalogue. I suppose only academics will find it interesting at all. But I thought, because you made it possible for me to learn all of this....I only--I wanted you to be the first person I shared it with. Because you knew him. And I know Great-Grandfather was very important to you."

As she speaks, he's leafing carefully through the book, seeing the photo of that storehouse he'd known so well, and photos of Haruka himself, standing tall and straight on the steps of the family temple. He manages not to tear up right in front of her, but it is a very near thing.

"This is...." He shakes his head, fearing that if he seeks too hard for the words, he will break.

"I cannot tell you, Haruka-chan, how much this means. Thank you. Thank you, so very much." Then he closes the book, sets it aside with the greatest care, for later. He knows he cannot call this gift his own, until he has given her a truly fair exchange for it.

"I'm sorry I'm unable to tell you all that you'd like to know, about your namesake. I didn't have the chance to know him, when he was alive."

"Watanuki-sama knew him in dreams. I remember you telling me."  
"And I think he was a different person, by then," he agrees. "I imagine he must have always been wise, and kind, and patient. He guided me, and advised me through very difficult times. He taught me what I could do with my power, and warned me about when to be careful with it. But I don't know what he was like, at home. With his family. I don't know what he was like when he was old. When I knew him, he looked just like Shizuka, when we were in school."

Here he pauses for a chuckle. "Except he smiled a lot more than I ever saw Shizuka smile."

For as little as he can tell her, Haruka looks rapt, but Watanuki knows his offering is insufficient. She deserves more. Not just for the book she has given him, which Watanuki will keep in his room and treasure as long as he lives. But because of her yearning, expressed in her life's work; all these years and all that she has deferred.

He's wracking his brain for what else he could possibly give her, when his eye lands on his dessert plate, and he remembers.

"Speaking of Shizuka. Did he ever tell your family, about the time he got his soul stolen?"

"Stolen?" she blinks. "Grandfather did?"  
Watanuki grins up at her, and then he has to laugh outright, because now he's seeing why he made these fondants tonight, and only for this one moment it is _so worth it_ , having outlived Shizuka so long, that he can tell the story of one of Shizuka's most foolish youthful blunders, to his granddaughter.

"We were in high school," he begins, refilling their glasses. "And I'd made these same fondants at Valentines, because Yuuko-san decided--at _midnight_ , can you believe--that she absolutely had to have some...." He tells her about taking the last one to school, heating it up for a girl he had the most desperate crush on, only to have Shizuka sneak up behind his back and devour it.

He draws the story out, embellishing it with exclamations and arm gestures, and by the time he gets to the Tengu--("You have to picture it, they were all costumed like a motorcycle gang, but not one of them was any taller than this...")--Haruka's cheeks are pink and she has one hand over her mouth, barely stifling her soft incredulous laughter. And then he tells about how he'd returned to find Shizuka, draped in sheets of newspaper, with Yuuko perched cheerfully on his chest, and Haruka's giggling bursts out, ringing through the room like sweet golden sunshine.

"So--so what did you do?" she asks, delighted and spellbound and this, Watanuki knows, this is the fitting payment for her gift to him.

"Ah, well I just, I put it back in."  
"Grandfather's _soul_. You just--" she tips her palms outward, "Just like that?"

"Well," he points out, "souls don't really like being outside their living body. They tend to want to go back in. So it wasn't really difficult."

She shakes her head, laughter trailing away, her smile so startling and lovely, that Watanuki finds himself hoping that the other people in her life get to see it. Her children, and her husband particularly.

And then of course, because she is thoughtful and always so very perceptive, she glances up to him.

"Zashiki-Warashi took Grandfather's soul, as a gift for Watanuki-sama."  
"She was terribly apologetic about it after," he's quick to mention. "All she wanted was the chocolate for a Valentine's gift, but she's so very innocent about humans."

"And yet...." Now Haruka is pensive, curious, and Watanuki is reminded that this woman was once greatly sought after, for her relentless searching and insight. For all he knows, she may still be. "Forgive me, I don't mean to presume, but it seems to me as though Grandfather's soul was....bound, to the chocolate that Watanuki-sama made. To such an extent that Zashiki-Warashi couldn't tell them apart. Is that correct?"

"Um--." Watanuki feels he needs to put in some disclaimer, here. To explain (as he had vigorously tried so many, many times, so long ago) that the truth of the matter was not what she was concluding. Except that he's more than old enough to know better by now, and he's had so much time to honestly miss Shizuka's companionship, that there is no contradiction he can make which won't sound impossibly anemic.

So he gives up and raises his hands in a shrug. "Shizuka liked my cooking. He was picky, and blunt, and impossible to deal with sometimes. All the years I knew him, we argued, and I made him angry, and oh, god he made me _furious_. But he always liked the food I made. And he..."

Watanuki bows his head, looking down at his plate, his hands, teetering on an admission he's never made aloud, but feeling she should hear it, she deserves to know this, because this was her family, who has faithfully looked after him all this time, and for some cause he cannot yet decipher, their destinies are still closely twined.

"He was always there, when I needed him. He saved my life, several times. When it counted most, he never hesitated. He never gave up, even when it caused him suffering. He paid so much on my behalf. But he never complained. He never let it come between us."

He glances up cautiously, unsure how she'll take this, knowing that from an outsider's viewpoint, his relationship with Shizuka skirted awfully close to indiscretion, and the sorts of things neighbors might gossip about behind one's back. Of course he'd never had any neighbors to start gossip, and Shizuka hadn't once given a damn for outsiders' opinions on any topic. But he respects Haruka, he's been fond of her for years, and the last thing he wants to do is give her the impression of skeletons in her family's closet.

Though of course he should have given her more credit. "Grandmother told me, years after Grandfather passed on. I was....in middle school, maybe? Anyway, we used to spend time together, just us, and she would tell me stories. About Watanuki-sama, and Grandfather, and how you both saved her. She said Grandfather and Watanuki-sama had a very rare bond. It was so rare, that our world, our language doesn't have a proper name for it."

"Yuuko-san always said Hitsuzen," Watanuki remarks, taking up his glass and swirling it a bit, before swallowing the last sip.

"There was that," Haruka nods. "But Grandmother said it was more. She told me she worried, that after Grandfather passed, Watanuki-sama might never find someone like him, to be close to."

In the years of his acquaintance with her, this is the most frank, personal conversation they've ever had. And as much of a relief as it is now, being able to talk as trusted friends with someone, finally, after so long, Watanuki is aware that he will pay for it later. In sleeplessness and homesick yearning, and more than likely a few tears, when he sits down and reads her book.

But somehow, he feels it will be worth it. They wouldn't even be having this talk, if she hadn't come to him tonight, distraught over her unresolved wish. And having long ago dismissed all notion of coincidence from his universe, Watanuki is confident that this turn in conversation must surely have some bearing on the reason she came here.

Although that being said, he does not care to divulge too much of his heart to her. It would be ungracious; she is burdened enough as it is, and truly the last thing he wants is to be pitied.

"Haruka-chan is generous, and understanding. I am so fortunate, at having the chance to know you. Being able to speak with you, and tell family stories, it makes me happier than you can know. And I'm very glad that Kohane-chan shared all that she did with you. Though I'm sorry to hear that she worried."

"I've often wondered, since I've known Watanuki-sama, if you were too lonely."

"Sometimes," he tilts his head, giving her a quiet smile. "Sometimes it might seem that way. But more often I'm thankful. For the friends I've made, the people I've had the chance to know. I've been able to help some of them find happiness, and that was always important to me. In some ways, my world seems very small. But in many ways, it has been rich." He reaches down, to stroke the cover of the book she gave him. "I truly am happy, with the things and people I can treasure."

She watches him, head tilted just so, with a wisp of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "I understand that. You might say it's the same for me, as well. I would ask if Watanuki-sama ever wants a different life. To leave his shop behind, and rejoin the world. But I feel the answer would be, no."

Now it's his turn to watch her, pensive, wondering. "You know it's strange. Every few years, someone asks me that. If I would want to leave. Or forget this place."

Haruka looks down, a little bow of acknowledgment. "Is that so." But then her eyes remain downcast, and he senses something there. A small avoidance. A knowledge of something she perhaps doesn't want him to see. His first impulse is to press, to search for what she seems to know, but for some reason he checks it. Even for a person of his abilities, there is a time and a place for learning certain truths. And if Haruka is not moved to volunteer what she knows, this is not the time for him to go prying.

"But Watanuki-sama is still content with his life. The price he pays for his wish, it is still fair to him," she says. Not a question, but a statement of understanding.  
"It is," he allows, and now she looks back up to him, and all trace of that secret is tucked out of sight. If anything, she looks more content herself, than before.

And he will wonder, of course. But he's wondered many things, for years and years, and it's never hurt him. If there is a need, the truth will unfold in its own time; for now, it's best that he leave it be.

"Ah, it must be late," he realizes. "I should send you home before your family worries."  
"They know I'm always safe, visiting here. Father understands," she smiles, and he gives her a playful grin.

"But it's already Valentines. Today, you should be with the ones you love. Here, let me package up that chocolate for you."

He tarries briefly over the bundle he wraps up for her. Thinking that the secret she is keeping, though he doesn't know it, it is something for his sake. And that is surely fair enough exchange for the little seal he slips in under the knot of the furoshiki, for her protection going home.

 

**


	5. Part Five

(5)

 

Summer to autumn, winter to spring. The shop's storeroom has entered an obstinate dusty phase; no matter how often or how thoroughly he cleans it, it seems determined to look woefully neglected. The same goes for his clothing: night after night he is busy mending hems, collars and split seams, on even his newest garments. Eventually the kitchen sets in to vex him as well, with the stove and the refrigerator developing mysterious quirks, so that he has to nudge something here, tap on this part there, jiggle the handle, turn these knobs just so, just to coax them into working.

During this time, he is studying Haruka's book, deliberately, cover to cover. Much of the language is academic, dense and difficult to understand. But the care and reverence that went into it are plain to see, and it is mainly for this reason that he cannot read more than a page or so a night. He studies the photographs of the temple, lingering over the image of that one sakura tree, where he and Shizuka, Mokona and Yuuko once played Mah-Jong, to soothe a long-earthbound spirit.

He never had gotten the hang of Mah-Jong, is what he's thinking, when he pulls off his glasses and fetches a handkerchief to dry his eyes.

**

At some point in the midst of all this, his helpers turn in their resignation.

It's a blustery, chilly, damp morning, and he's on his knees with his head in the oven, pulling out every trick he can think of to wake it up and make it work. It's cold, and he woke up with a distinct craving for cranberry scones with his breakfast tea, but there will be no scones if he can't get the damned oven to behave.

"Mokona!" he calls out sharply, irritated by the grease all up his arms and on his samue, glasses smudged and askew on his face, and oh if Yuuko could see him now she'd be in hysterics. "Mokona could you _please_ call the temple, and see if Daisuke-san can't send us a handyman with a wish?"

"Watanuki-sama," says Mokona quietly, behind him.  
"Eh?" Watanuki crawls back out from oven, arming his hair out of his eyes, and using his least grease-blackened finger to nudge his glasses up his nose. "Look I'm baking this morning, would you mind--."

Abruptly he breaks off because all three of them are standing there, regarding him gravely. Maru, Moro, Mokona. And whatever this is, he does not have a good feeling about it.

"We're sorry, Master," says Maru, and Moro nods.  
"Very terribly sorry."

They look pale, wilted and sad, but even more unsettling is the way they seem to be propping each other up, as though neither girl could stand on her own.  
"What's wrong? Are you ill? What can I do?" Stricken with alarm, he starts to clamber up, but Mokona stops him.

"Watanuki-sama, we're tired. We need time to rest."  
"Oh. Well then...." He's about to suggest they all go lie down awhile; it's fine, he can get through the day without them. But then he looks, really looks closely between the three of them.

And it's true. They look careworn, diminished, and all at once Watanuki's remorse rushes up and flattens him. Because this isn't new. It's been right in front of his eyes, for months. Mokona's absence from their evening drinks on the engawa, and the creature's unusually subdued manner the rest of the time. And then the girls, off napping at all hours of the day, even when he calls for their help with a customer.

In all his dozens of storeroom cleaning frenzies this year, they've scarcely been around to assist. At night, when he sits up mending his clothes, he's mostly been alone. And when he's reading Haruka's book....well, he prefers solitude for that, so he hasn't noticed where the others are.

But he ought to have noticed. Because they've been his companions, his helpers, faithfully through all these years. Yuuko entrusted them to his care, and he to theirs, and now he sees he has done the unkindest thing, taking them for granted.

He slides down to the floor and leans back against the cabinet, oven and scones forgotten.

"Please. I'm the one who should be sorry," he tells the girls. "You've given your best effort for so long. Of course you'd be tired." He looks down to Mokona, thinking to give it a comforting pat on the head, but then remembers the state of his hands and refrains.

"Tell me, then," he asks instead. "What can I do, to help you rest?"

**

They need a room. A place to be undisturbed for awhile. They can't say for how long, but Watanuki recalls that Mokona had been sleeping for three years, before he came to work for Yuuko. Though whether it's three years, or ten years, or fifty years they need to rest, time does not burden Watanuki so much as it once had. Some days will be unimaginably long, and some years will whisk by in an eyeblink. One way or another, he will manage without them, and make sure they get the respite they deserve.

Given the recent behavior of the storeroom, he doesn't care to leave them there. Instead he cleans out his closets and armoire, moves out the shelf where he's kept Haruka's book, makes up the bed with fresh sheets, pillows, and blankets, and gives them his own room and bed.

"You were all here before I was," he explains at their hesitance. "You've kept me company here when I was sick, or hurt, or lonely. And this is the strongest, safest room in the house. It will make me feel better, to know you're protected in here."

"We're sad," yawns Moro, "to leave Watanuki-sama all alone."  
"We don't want Watanuki-sama to be lonely," adds Maru, nestling in under the sheets with her twin.

"Please be careful without us," says Mokona, with eyes at half-mast already. "Don't forget the people you can call on, if you need help."

It is a very short list of people whose services exact a high price, Watanuki knows, but nonetheless he nods obediently. "Don't worry, I promise to be careful. Just rest well, so we can see each other again soon."

He places a kiss on each of their foreheads, and though his heart is heavy and tender, he pulls up the blankets and takes care tucking them in. Once they're all asleep, he steps out and slides the door shut, sealing it with soft words, the touch of his hands, and then a few special ofuda for extra protection.

The house feels so quiet, once he's done. It's like walking through a forest buried under a thick blanket of snow, on a winter's evening. He thinks Shizuka and his grandfather would have enjoyed this atmosphere. He thinks this stillness would have driven Yuuko to drink. And then he thinks maybe this isn't the time to be reminiscing on those who have left him, lest _he_ end up drinking the years away.

Instead he makes a project of one of the guest rooms; the room where he used to stay over when Yuuko lived here, the room where Shizuka spent countless nights over the years until he married Kohane, and Watanuki evicted him. All but shouting at the top of his lungs, that Shizuka had a beautiful, gracious, understanding wife at home, who could cook breakfast at least as well as him, and it would be criminal, unforgivable, of Shizuka to leave her lonely.

"If I ever find out you've made her cry," he'd threatened at the time, "I swear I will find a way to curse you!" Shizuka had rolled his eyes, and taken back the bundle of spare clothes and effects he'd left over the years, but obstinately refused to take his toothbrush. Watanuki had railed at him about the rudeness, the imposition, why should he have to keep a disgusting unsanitary used toothbrush around, all the way down the front walk to the gate.

But Shizuka never did take that toothbrush back, and not until a decade after he'd died, had Watanuki thrown it away. And though he's trying not to think about any of this, as he sweeps and dusts his new room, airing out the futon, making room in the closets and drawers for his wardrobe, setting up the special shelf where he can put Haruka's book, he can't escape the muffled quiet emptiness closing in around him. This feeling of the world dropping away, bit by bit, person by person, until it will only be him, left alone in the silence, waiting, and waiting, and waiting until time itself spins to a stop.

It's at this point that he shoves open the doors to the engawa, not caring a damn about the rain or the cold wind blowing in against his face, making his eyes water. He wants fresh air, he wants to know there's still a world out there, beyond the garden walls, a world he still has ties to, no matter that today feels like so many loose ends raveling away from him, too fast and too far to catch.

He stumbles off the porch and out into the rain, taking off his glasses, turning his face up to the sky, so that the tears from his eyes and the rain on his cheeks look like one and the same.

**

The shop has taken on a permanent air of stillness, and though the months trickle away to one year, and the next, Watanuki cannot reconcile himself to it. The longer it goes on, the place becomes _too_ still, this silence isn't right, it isn't peaceful. Now and again he'll bolt upright in his bed in the middle of the night, wide awake from a deep sleep, tensed and waiting. Or he'll be sitting propped against the doorway, gazing out at nothing in the yard, and suddenly he'll blink and come to, with the strongest feeling of imminence.

He'll go to the phone in the hallway, and just stand there, for minutes at a time, thinking it's about to ring, that's what he's feeling. He'll wait out on the front walk, studying the buildings surrounding the shop, searching the street and sidewalk past the front gate. But the phone doesn't ring and no one arrives, except for the odd customer, and in those cases he knows right away, with an increasing sinking frustration, that they aren't it. They aren't what he feels himself, the shop, the very air around him, waiting for.

In spite of that, he certainly doesn't complain about any visitors. Nowadays when people come to him with wishes, he's taken to tarrying with them, offering as much of his time and hospitality as he thinks the shop will let him get away with. The pipe-cleaner rabbit drops in from the spirit world, and though this isn't the event that's been crackling over Watanuki's shoulder for months, either, Watanuki hands over Yuuko's kiseru for cleaning and plies the fellow with mochi, homemade wine, assorted finger foods. Then he drags out the small grill and convinces the rabbit to stay for dinner, and then the whisky comes out, and Watanuki fetches the shamisen, and the rabbit dredges his memory for folk songs from entire eras past.

They sing and drink until they're staggering, and Watanuki helps the rabbit into the rear parlor, setting him up on the sofa with a blanket, so he can sleep it off.

But the next morning, when he awakes feeling bludgeoned, the house is as still and poised-on-the-brink as before. The pipe-cleaner had already packed up and moved on, leaving a note saying he'd taken the liberty of looking in on the oven (which Watanuki vaguely recalls lamenting over, the night before). It appeared in want of a good cleaning, and never let it be said (so the note informed him) that the pipe-cleaner left his obligations unmet.

Whatever the rabbit had done, it appears to have been the right thing. From that morning on, the oven functions perfectly. Better than it had when he'd first come to the shop, in fact, to the extent that Watanuki has to amend all his baking recipes to account for the improved efficiency.

 

**

 

Shichiseki, Chouyou, Jinjitsu, Jyoushi. He observes the traditional festivals, holds to the calculations of the ancient calenders, learning their legendary roots from his second-world visitors, until his dreams, now long empty of Haruka's company, adopt the characters of early folklore. The hare, the cat, the falcon, the tanuki.

In the first true warm spell of spring, he stretches his legs out on the engawa in the afternoons and dozes, propped against the porch-posts. One day, he dreams of a small scroll, tumbling through the very yard where he sleeps. He gets up to retrieve it, but the wind catches it first, sending it up, up over the fence and away.

The next afternoon, his dream takes him to the courtyard of the Doumeki temple, and that same light scroll, dancing leaflike across the courtyard where Shizuka used to sweep in the mornings. Just when he thinks he can catch it, it goes spinning beyond his reach.

Days pass and he follows it through the park near his old high school, down the sidewalk of the route he used to take home, through the long soundless hallways of the shop, always just a step behind, always just a finger's length short of it.

After nearly a week of chasing the scroll through his dreams, he decides a little exertion is in order. He lays down for his afternoon nap on the sofa this time, leaving the windows and doors open to the sweet spring air, and a short bamboo staff clasped in his hands. This time in the dream, he chases the scroll to the kitchen, and with just a little _nudge_ his staff becomes a net, the sort used for scooping goldfish at festival stalls. He scoops the scroll up then, with a little smile.

"With the way you've been teasing me, I think you wanted to be caught," he tells it, and finally takes it up between his fingers.

On the scroll, is a child's drawing of a blue carp, in bright crayon. The carp appears to be flying, up near a vivid yellow sun, and beneath are the wisps and curls of green grass.

"Well then, who is it, who wants to make sure I don't forget Tango no Sekku?" He's smiling in broad amusement now, and though he finds no name or symbol to indicate the drawing's origin, Watanuki is charmed, nonetheless. He notes the deliberation given to every scale on the carp, every blade of grass. Though the artist is clearly inexperienced, they put time and effort into the work, and enough intent to rouse his attention in dreams for a week running.

"You don't have to worry," he tells the scroll. "I've received your message, and I will look forward to meeting you soon."

Upon waking he heads to the garden, gathers the iris leaves and oak leaves he will need, and brings them straight into the kitchen, to begin preparations.

 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: The last part of this chapter makes reference to the five traditional festivals of the lunar calendar, as mentioned in [Rou Chapter 208](http://www.mangafox.com/manga/xxxholic/v18/c208/5.html).
> 
> For further reading, here are links to [Jinjitsu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinjitsu), [Jyoushi](http://numanuma-diary.blogspot.com/2009/02/hinamatsuri.html) (this article recaps briefly how it evolved to Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival), [Shichiseki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata) (which evolved to Tanabata, the day when the legendary Weaver and the Herder can meet), and [Chouyou](http://www.bite-japan.com/kako/calendar09-e.html).
> 
> As for [Tango no Sekku](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tango_no_sekku), to sum up, it was originally the Boys Day festival, or Festival of Banners, which in 1948 was renamed Children's Day ( _Kodomo no Hi_ ). It is traditional to raise flying carp banners in front of one's house on this day, and to serve certain foods which will get mentioned later, but if you're impatient, you can read about them at that link.


	6. Part six

(6)

 

"Watanuki-sama, I'm sorry for intruding..."

Somehow, he is not terribly surprised to see Haruka in the entry, the next afternoon; and the fact that she's holding the hand of her youngest son is not entirely unexpected. But when the child peeks around her skirt, fixing him with a piercing golden stare, he has to admit he is completely taken aback.

"Ryou, this is our important family friend, Watanuki-sama. Would you like to say hello to him?"

The child measures him, sizing him up with uncanny focus, and Watanuki can picture those eyes, sharp as a falcon's, picking out every scale on a flying blue carp, every blade of grass on the ground beneath it.

His throat is dry, and his heart is kicking against the wall of his chest, but he is cognizant enough to see that Haruka is looking uncomfortably between them, like she might be rethinking the wisdom of this visit. So he pulls himself together, puts on a smile, and bows.

"Ryou-san, I am honored to meet you. Welcome to my shop."

"...pleasetomeetyou," the boy mutters back after a moment, half into his mother's skirt.

Watanuki turns his smile on Haruka for reassurance. "You chose a perfect day to come. I have all this food for Tango, and was starting to worry I'd have no one to share it with."

"I'd hate to think we were imposing on your time," Haruka answers politely, but behind her eyes he sees a wealth of disconcerted questions, and a strong desire to consult with him in private. As well she should have, he thinks, leading them to the rear parlor, where the doors are open wide to the bright warm day. Frankly, he has not a few questions, himself.

But hospitality always comes first; he has only to put the finishing touches on the plates of the traditional Boy's Day dishes: mochi wrapped in the oak leaves he had gathered, and chimaki served in the leaves of the iris. In addition to this, Haruka has brought him enough food to restock the kitchen for days, so he quickly slices up some beef and vegetables for the grill, opens a bottle of strawberry wine to decant for later, and puts the pot on for tea.

The weather is fine, so he suggests a picnic in the rear yard. Haruka takes care of the grill, while Watanuki serves out their place settings, keeping a sidelong eye on Ryou, who periodically creeps off to inspect the hedge, the flowers, the rear fence, but then quickly returns to sit close at his mother's side, staring at Watanuki whenever he thinks Watanuki won't notice.

But Watanuki cannot help but notice. He can feel the child's eyes trained on him, and perhaps he's just been too long out of the company of young children and their scrutiny, but it takes him some actual effort not to become flustered or unnerved.

"Does Ryou-san like kashiwa-mochi?" he asks the boy, setting a plate out for him, along with a cup of orange blossom-sweetened tea.  
Ryou eyes the food with a certain cool reserve, and his mother quietly clears her throat and catches Watanuki's eye. "Sorry, he can be....particular, sometimes."

Watanuki understands this for code, that the boy was probably an extremely picky eater, to an extent that troubled his mother, and smiles to reassure her. "It's all right, children often have sensitive palates. Please," he nods to Ryou, "you're welcome to try whatever you want, here. Maybe you'll find something you like."

The boy listens to him, examines him, then looks back down to his plate. Not wishing to pressure him, Watanuki moves to help Haruka with the plates of grilled dishes, making room among the rice toppings and tea service. He remarks on how perfect the weather is, what a good day they chose for their outing, and Haruka makes agreeable conversation back. When there is a brief lull, Ryou decides to speak.

"We hung up carp flags. At our house today. Five carps. Because it's Tango no Sekku."

"Hm," nods Watanuki. "And do you know the legend of the carp?"

"If the carp can swim up the river, it will become a strong dragon." Ryou quickly darts a look to his mother, who smiles her approval.  
"And we hope for you, and your brother and sister to become strong, like that," she adds.

Watanuki watches the boy peer at his mother, solemn and focused, and sees such an uncanny family resemblance that he has to rein back hard on his urge to smile. And then those solemn sharp eyes turn on him.  
"Is Watanuki-sama a dragon? Is that why he's so strong?"

Watanuki blinks, caught totally off-guard, and now it's Haruka's turn to hide a smile. "No dearest, he's a person like us. Why don't you try your mochi, now."

Ryou obediently takes up his food, and after a bit of studious frowning, takes a single cautious taste. Watanuki is keeping his hands occupied, but he's observing from the corner of one eye, as Ryou swallows, considers the flavor at length, and then takes another tiny bite.

"Mm," says the boy, and barely audible, comes the trailing edge of Haruka's relieved sigh.

By the time they've finished the picnic, Watanuki understands her relief, because everything Ryou tries undergoes the same cautious investigation. He approves of the kachiwa-mochi, but not the chimaki. The pickled vegetables on his rice are acceptable, but the pickled plums are left aside. He picks indifferently at the grilled beef, and then eats all the grilled yellow bell pepper that comes into his reach.

On a morbid curious impulse, Watanuki offers him the plate of inarizushi. The first bite looks to be touch-and-go. But then apparently it passes muster, and Ryou puts away five servings. Watanuki concludes that it must be nerve-wracking for Haruka, trying to keep this child fed. Having tutored her personally, Watanuki knows she is no slouch in the kitchen, and having been accustomed so long to only hearing praise for his own cooking, it's a sharp stick to his pride, being judged by a boy barely old enough for primary school.

Although that pricking is assuaged somewhat, when he and Haruka are able to converse privately.  
"I am truly thankful that he likes your cooking," she confesses, sounding so heartfelt that he suspends his initial disbelief. "He won't eat anything our parishioners bring, or anything made by his father's side of the family. I've given up taking him out to eat. Honestly, his brother and sister were never this much trouble."

"You know, your grandfather...."  
"Yes, yes I know," says Haruka. "I just never imagined he was that difficult."

Watanuki tamps his bark of laughter down to a snort, because dear god he _remembers_ Shizuka so vividly right now.   
"Oh Haruka-chan, if you only knew what a terror he was. I can't even tell you how many fights we had, because of food. He demanded impossible things out of season, and then griped about the sauce, how much salt, the shape of his croquettes until so help me, I could have _strangled_ him. Years I had to listen to that, _years_."

"Grandfather was that bad?" she eyes him sidelong. "I don't remember that, at home."  
"He was awful," Watanuki assures her, grinning with a bit of naughty glee because one shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but Shizuka had earned it fair and square, in this case.

She humors him with an upturn at the corner of her mouth. "Watanuki-sama isn't just saying this, so I don't feel like a terrible mother, is he?"  
"Certainly not," he says. "This is pure vengeful slandering, on my part. I've bottled it up for decades."

Haruka tips her head back and laughs, and Watanuki is relieved to see the strain she'd walked in with lift away from her. If she can laugh, then whatever problem she has brought cannot be so desperate. She is not in dire straits, only greatly in want of some reassurance.

He glances over to check on Ryou, out in the yard, occupying himself with the calligraphy set Watanuki had brought out. Judging by the boy's expression, he's struggling over matters of gravest import, though Watanuki is beginning to suspect this is what passes for contentment, with this interesting child. When Haruka follows his gaze to her son, he sees a bit of cloud-shadow return to her face, and takes up the wine decanter to pour them each a refill.

"So," he says lightly, since they may as well broach the subject now. "Ryou-kun can see this shop."

"He asked to come," she says, after a pensive moment. "I remembered your advice before, I wasn't going to try bringing him until he was much older. But he asked."  
"You've told him about the shop before?"

"No....not in any detail. But Watanuki-sama should understand. Ryou is...." She trails off, searching the air for an explanation, while Watanuki waits, sipping at his wine.

"First it was the ofuda, around the temple," she eventually says. "He asked who drew them. And then he found the box for a bento you'd given Grandmother, years and years ago. He wanted to know who it came from. And then last month, I was putting away my winter scarf, the one you made me. He saw me with it, and he said....'that's the same person'."

She reaches down for her glass then, but her eyes are set on Watanuki, questioning, as she drinks. "I don't know how he knew. But he told me, he wanted to meet the person who made my scarf, and our ofuda, and gave us that bento. And....I'm sorry, but I didn't want to bring him. Earlier, when we first got here, and he could see your shop, I almost left. I wanted to leave."

"Because he's too young," says Watanuki, and Haruka bows her head low.  
"I'm very sorry. Watanuki-sama has been a dear friend to me, I trust you, my family has put their trust in you. But Ryou. He's only six. That's too young for a wish."

"It's too young for the price," Watanuki clarifies, because it doesn't take any great stretch of intellect to know that this is her chief fear, having now spent half her life in payment for her own wish with this shop. She's nearing thirty-eight years, and still, he sees the crimson ring on her right pinky finger.

"What do I do?" she asks, in a near-whisper. "I'm his mother. I have to protect him. But do I even have a choice?"

It is these moments, when Watanuki's work is the worst burden. He has learned to bear up under his own heartbreak and longing, all the lonely hours, and all the tears he has shed with no one to see. But to see another's heart--to see a friend's heart, for that is what Haruka is to him, so dear--pressed to the breaking point, this is the one thing he thinks he will never learn to bear.

Though if the day ever comes when he can look on indifferently....god help him, then.

"Haruka-chan. You always have a choice. But Ryou-kun does as well. I can't tell you for certain, why he recognized me, in the things you mentioned. But the fact that he can, it must mean his choices will be important. I believe the best way you can protect him, is to teach him this."

"Teach him?" She raises up to look at him, and then looks off across the yard to her son, concentrating so intently with the calligraphy brush clutched in his little hand. "What can I teach him, when he sees things I can't?"

"You may not share his sight. But you have experience. You have all your great-grandfather's library. And who else in the world, knows it better than you?"

Slowly her mouth opens, in a small soundless _Ah._ In that moment of her comprehension, Watanuki feels a small shiver in the air between them, and then sees in the corner of his eye, how Ryou sits straight up from his work, alert and watching them.

He turns to acknowledge the boy's gaze, and Ryou stares back for a moment, before setting aside his brush and climbing to his feet, retrieving the paper he'd been working on. He marches directly across the yard with it, to the engawa, first regarding his mother, and then looking back to Watanuki.

"Is Ryou-san's work completed now?" Watanuki asks. "You looked like you were giving it your all."

"I think it's finished," the boy tells him. "But I've never made one. I'm not sure."  
"May I see?" says Watanuki, and after a moment's internal debate, perhaps measuring to see whether Watanuki is worthy, Ryou hands the paper over to him.

 

 

Watanuki feels it before he sees it. Like a single delicate note struck on a glass chime, faint but unmistakable, the paper rings against his skin. The character Ryou has drawn is advanced for his age, but then being raised in a temple, he likely saw it all the time.

"Shyu?" he reads, the character encompassing the very meaning of a paper charm. It's literal, simple: defend, protect, guard. Yet for all its childish simplicity, he knows this charm has virtue enough to serve its purpose.

"Mamoru," Ryou corrects him; a slightly different connotation.

Watanuki smiles, on the verge of saying _Did we have an appointment I wasn't aware of?_ But of course they did, they must have, because how many times had Yuuko told him, how many times has he seen for himself, that there is a purpose, a connection, with every person he meets? And if that wasn't evidence enough, then what about that week of dreams, chasing a scroll, only to find it was from someone in search of him? Whether Ryou is aware of it or not, he had sent Watanuki that dream, there is not a doubt in Watanuki's mind.

So instead he nods to Ryou. "Yes. For your first effort, you've done well."

The child searches him, all but dissecting Watanuki with his eyes for several seconds, before he turns toward his mother, who'd been observing the exchange closely. "Mama," he frowns, as his gaze drops to the boards of the engawa right next to her. "Your ring fell off."

Watanuki and Haruka's reactions are nearly identical: a sharp silent intake of breath, a quick meeting of equally startled eyes, and then they both look to the place where Ryou is at that moment headed. He's set his paper near Watanuki's knee, and clambered up on the engawa, going right to where a crimson silk cord has fallen, a small limp pile on the boards.

"Sweetheart, please don't touch," Haruka is quick to say, one hand warding the boy back from the object before he can reach for it. Watanuki takes the cue to rise quickly and come around to her side, kneeling to inspect the cord. He puts his hand near it, not quite touching, and feels right away that whatever power it had been endowed with, now it is only a lifeless scrap of thread.

"It's safe," he reassures her, and plucks it up, letting it dangle from his fingers, just as when he'd first found it. "It appears the purpose of this has been accomplished."

"You....you mean my--" Haruka breaks off there, but Watanuki can see the question in her eyes; a question so fraught and desperate, that she can't bring herself to voice it.

"Yes," he confirms. "The price is complete. Your wish is complete."

She covers her mouth with one hand, and seeing her wide eyes welling with tears, Watanuki decides she could use a moment alone.

"Ryou-san?" He turns to the boy, looking nonplussed at his mother. "Would you like me to show you around the garden?"

Clearly Ryou was brought up well; he looks like he'd far rather stay and find out what his mother's problem is, but then he looks at Watanuki kneeling there, and after a moment, nods. "Yes, please."

Without delay, Watanuki stands and leads him back down the steps of the engawa, heading for the far side of the back lawn. "This house is an interesting place," he says lightly. "It was here a long time before I came. And it really has a mind of its own sometimes. This back lawn, especially."

Ryou takes this in, ponders it for several steps, and then says, "I'm learning to sweep the courtyard at home. Grandfather is teaching me."

"That's a job that never ends," Watanuki remarks. "I imagine you'll learn a lot of patience, from it."  
"Grandfather says some day I should be able to meditate when I sweep. But right now, I just have to get all the leaves."

Watanuki nods along, and then something occurs to him. "Make sure you're careful of spider webs, in that courtyard. If you ruin a spider's home, it might decide to carry a grudge against you."

Ryou blinks up at him in open curiosity; it's the first unguarded expression he's yet seen from the boy. "Is that what Watanuki-sama's ofuda do? Keep the spiders out?"

Watanuki absolutely doesn't want to alienate this serious child by condescending to him, but he can't help a smile and a chuckle at this. "Not really. The ofuda are to protect your house and your family from bad spirits. Since your temple is a sanctuary for many people, it's important to keep it clean and pure."   
Then a certain impulse makes him ask, "Does Ryou-san ever see things, at the temple, that other people can't?"

By now, Ryou appears to have forgotten entirely about his mother, in favor of poring carefully over the question. He has his hands folded behind his back, frowning down at the grass, looking for all the world like a miniature forty-year-old. Watanuki thinks how Shizuka would have just stared blankly back at him, possibly rolling his eyes if he thought the question was beneath him. His granddaughter Haruka (at that moment having herself a well-earned cry in the back parlor, just past the engawa doors) would have tilted her head at him; studying him, studying the question, studying all the ways she might answer.

But Ryou is different. He seems to tackle questions very much on his own, breaking them apart and weighing the pieces, and requiring no input from Watanuki at all in his considerations. Finally he purses his lips. Hesitates a moment.

"Some things, people don't notice. Like butterflies? And when the first maple leaf turns red. And there's this little hole, in one of the shouji, in our house? It's really small. But I noticed it. And nobody else did."

Interesting, thinks Watanuki, nodding along to encourage the boy.

"But," Ryou continues after glancing up to Watanuki; possibly for approval, or confirmation, or just for inscrutable reasons of his own. "There's other things. That people don't see at all. One time there was a funeral at our temple. And I saw a person that nobody else talked to. Nobody saw them."

"Did you talk to them?" asks Watanuki, fascinated and quite honestly nervous for the boy. But Ryou shakes his head.  
"I'm not supposed to be around, when there's funerals. And then? Later on, they were gone. I um." He darts a quick glance over his shoulder, and then drops his voice, so low that Watanuki has to lean in and strain to hear. "I went in that room, after everybody left. But nobody was there. At all."

Watanuki is well aware that Ryou has shared a deep secret with him. That somehow, he has passed muster in the boy's eyes, and is now apparently party to privileged information. Though what he's meant to do with this, or Ryou's confidence in him, he has no idea. The best he thinks he can offer is advice, and the benefit of his own experience, in terms Ryou can understand, and hopefully make use of.

"I think what Ryou-san might have seen, was a person's spirit. Before they decided to move on. Sometimes when people die, it takes them awhile to decide to leave this world."

"You mean before they go to heaven?" asks Ryou. And here Watanuki knows he needs to be careful not to contradict whatever the child has been taught by his family, regarding the afterlife, while still answering as honestly as he can.

"I suppose so," he nods. "We would all like to think that's where they go. Here, why don't I show you around the side now."

Ryou follows dutifully, but now he's eying Watanuki with more curiosity than he seems to have for the side yard of the shop. Halfway to the front lawn, he asks, "Is it okay, that Mama lost her red ring? Is that something bad?"

"No, it's a good thing. It's just that she's worn it a long time, and....I think she was surprised, when it finally came off. Did Ryou-san always see that ring?"

"Always," nods Ryou. "But it was....that thing? Other people never saw it. So I think--," he shrugs up one shoulder and turns his frown toward his shoes, "--I wasn't supposed to talk about it."

At the front corner of the house, as they're ambling past, Watanuki's eye is caught by a spot of white, standing out against the wall. "Hmm." He leads Ryou over toward it, and kneels down, with Ryou following suit. "This iris. It wasn't here yesterday."

He's thinking about the nature of this child's sight, what it could mean, and how he truly has no precedent for this. It has in no way escaped his attention that Haruka's ring untied itself, within moments of her son walking up with a simple, but entirely legitimate ofuda he'd made. But what exactly could it mean? What was Hitsuzen showing them today?

"Do you know," he murmurs, half to Ryou and half lost in his own thoughts, "what the iris signifies, in flower language?"

Ryou shakes his head. "I didn't learn that yet."

Watanuki turns to him, taking him in, wondering and wondering about this small, sturdy, serious boy. "It means, 'Good News'. You know, I've been trying to think why Ryou-san might have come here today. Maybe there is some good news you've been looking for?"

Again he's treated to a spell of Ryou's silent, studious contemplation. Looking at the flower, looking at the grass, taking a moment to apparently memorize the embroidery on Watanuki's tunic sleeves (he'd felt a crane pattern was appropriate today). Watanuki waits patiently, wondering if he will hear a wish, or a request, and how they will work the bargain from there. He is still mindful of Haruka's worry, that Ryou is too young to get drawn into a price such as she has paid. But he also knows too well that meddling with Hitsuzen, attempting to deny it out of fearfulness, rarely leads to any good at all.

Though in the end, it seems worrying is needless. After a great deal of thought, Ryou simply shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know."

"Has your family told you," Watanuki asks, just to be sure, "that people can't see my shop, unless they have a wish?"

When he cocks his head at Watanuki, Ryou looks remarkably like his mother. "Mama said most people can't see where you live. And she said you sell wishes, and do favors for people. But they have to....um. Swap you something, for it?"

"Yes, that's right. I can grant any wish, as long as the person who makes the wish can pay the price I tell them."  
He has to admit he's amused, at how Ryou takes this completely in stride. "So. If I wished for. A horse? You could do that?"

"If you could pay for the wish, yes."  
"And if I wished....uh....for a swimming pool, at our house?"  
"I could grant a wish for a swimming pool."  
"What about. An airplane? Or....a pet tiger?"

Out of all the wishes Watanuki has granted in years and years and years, he doesn't think he's ever met a potential customer who made him want to smile, like this. None of these wishes are remotely sincere; Ryou is merely speculating, forming his own grasp on what Watanuki can do.

But the people who come to him seriously, he'd never realized that they don't speculate. All they want is whatever desire has overtaken them, and driven them here. It's all they see, all they're capable of seeing. They'd never think to ask about airplanes, tigers, swimming pools, or any of the other hundreds of possibilities which a six-year-old could dream up at a moment's notice.

And maybe, he thinks, that's the real reason most of their lives feel so incomplete. They know they're lacking something important, and in the main, they blame that feeling on what they see in their everyday lives. Their job, their romantic prospects, the place they call home. Just like that woman, his first customer, so to speak. The one who'd come all those years upon years ago, wishing to learn cooking. Of course that wasn't what she really wanted, it was only the nearest thing she could think to ask for. There was a conspicuous emptiness inside her, something wrong she didn't know how to repair. Perhaps in a poetic sense, her wish to make good food was fitting. But as he got to know her, Watanuki learned better.

Now, with Ryou waiting on him with all his quietly fierce attention, Watanuki has to ponder. What could a child so young and obviously bright, surrounded by caring family, possibly want enough to bring him here? For a moment he searches Ryou's gaze, because he always looks to a person's eyes first, to seek the truth of their wish.

And yes, he thinks there _could_ be something, far down in the depths of that too-sharp gold. Ryou may not know it yet, it may not have a name, or an object to rest upon. But looking close, looking deep, Watanuki can see--

( _don't say it_ )

\--something almost familiar. Something he thinks he--

( _shh keep it quiet_ )

\--should know. It's barely plucking at the edge of his memory, like shreds of a forgotten dream--

( _if you don't ask, it doesn't count, so please don't say a word_ ).

"Can I ask a question?" Ryou's voice breaks the stillness, he blinks, and whatever Watanuki thinks he might have almost seen scatters off, like shadows from lamplight.

Watanuki breathes, to quell an unease he can't quite name. "Yes?"

"In Watanuki-sama's house. There are other people. But not."

And if Watanuki wasn't already certain, now he is: that regardless of whether this child has a wish, he belongs here. "That's correct. Does Ryou-san know where they are?"

"The door, where Watanuki-sama was sitting. Behind that door, somebody is there."

"Let's go back to the engawa, so your mother doesn't worry, hm?" He stands and leads the boy back around the house, pausing at the engawa and nodding toward the closed doors, which led to the room where Mokona, Maru, and Moro had been sleeping the past few years away.

"My friends are in there," he tells Ryou. "They used to help me here, but they were very tired, so now they're resting awhile."  
"And Watanuki-sama takes care of them?"

"I do my best," he agrees.

Ryou studies the door intently for a long moment, and then marches over to take up the ofuda he'd shown Watanuki earlier. "If you put this up, on the door, will it help them?"

Watanuki is mildly startled; while he'd gone to the effort of protecting the interior door to that bedroom, it hadn't occurred to him at all, to seal the outer door. Which was a terrible oversight, now that he realizes it. The fact that it has taken a child to point it out to him, only worsens his chagrin.  
"I think it would. But wouldn't you rather take it home, to show your family?"

Ryou gives a tiny shrug. "I showed Mama. And you. That's enough."  
"Ah. Hm."

Watanuki sits on the edge of the engawa, because now he has to think. Actually he wouldn't mind a bit of a smoke while he thinks, but it seems he harbors a previously unrealized hangup about smoking around children. "Ryou-san understands how my shop works, that I cannot give something, without receiving something else of equal value, yes?"

"I--I think so."  
"Well it also works the other way. I cannot take something, without giving something of equal value. And Ryou-san's ofuda is something valuable."

The boy peers down at his paper with a skeptical air. "It is?"  
"Yes indeed. So the question is--." Watanuki leans back against the porch post, seeking that tipping-scale feeling, weighing out possibilities. "What should I give you, in exchange for what you've made?"

Ryou looks at Watanuki, looks at his ofuda, looks back to Watanuki. Then his brow furrows with deep thought, and he climbs up on the engawa and sits, with his hands holding the paper on his lap, and small legs dangling down.

After some mutual thoughtful silence between them, he says, "I don't think Mama would like a swimming pool at our house. And I can't take riding lessons until I'm nine."

"So you wouldn't need a horse right now," Watanuki supposes. "And tigers and airplanes are a lot of trouble to keep around."

"Yeah," sighs Ryou.

"I should see if your mother needs anything. Would you like to stay and think about it?"  
"Yes, please."

 

Returning indoors, he finds Haruka, dry-eyed and composed, waiting for him.

 

*****


	7. Part Seven

(7)

 

"May I ask, whether my son has made a wish?" Haruka says, and Watanuki realizes that while he and Ryou had been touring the yard, she has been bracing herself.

He kneels beside her, and offers a smile he hopes is comforting. "He's considering a request. He wants to give me the ofuda he made, and I told him I must give something in return for it."

She looks out toward the open doorway, back straight, hands placed with exacting symmetry on her lap. Watching her, Watanuki thinks he'd never accounted for how formidable she might become, should the occasion call for it. But like the color of her eyes, and her quiet stoicism, it seems she's inherited Shizuka's deep resolute strength as well. And of course in the matter of her child's safety, that deep steel would be most evident; it would cut down anyone who overstepped their bounds and failed to respect it.

"We discussed," Watanuki offers, in an effort to put her mind at ease, "how horses, airplanes, and tigers were impractical to wish for. So he wanted time to think of something else."

"It's inevitable, right?" she finally says, looking toward him. "It's Hitsuzen, that he's come here to meet you today."

"I would say the odds are better than fair," Watanuki concedes. "But I hope Haruka-chan understands how much I value your family's safety and well-being. I would never grant him a wish he couldn't pay for. And I would counsel him very seriously, if he came to me with a wish involving the sort of consequences you have faced."

"And would you tell me, if he came to you with such a request?"

"I would certainly advise him to gain your permission, and your blessing, first. And to consider the effect on his family's happiness. I consider that part of my duty to all of you."

Haruka presses her lips tight together, gives one slow nod of understanding. Then her eyes stray across the room, the furnishings, the half-open partition leading toward the interior hall.

"I never. All the times I came here, all these years. I was never afraid of this place. Or of Watanuki-sama. But bringing my son here, who I cherish with all my heart....I worry, about what this place can do. And I understand now," turning back to gaze at him. "That there are things which are not within your power to control. The laws of this shop, they are stronger than you."

"That is true. But I can promise you, that I would never see another person come to harm in this shop. Even if I had to pay a price myself. There are some people that....it isn't good for them to come here. And so far, I've had enough influence to keep those people from returning. For their own safety."

He sees the spark of curiosity in her glance, sees her regarding him as she files that away for later consideration. Then her eyes go distant again, returning to the open door leading outside, and she gives a tiny sigh.

"At least I can trust you will be patient with him. Others have not found him....so easy to get along with. His teachers at school. Three times this year, my husband and I have been called for conferences."

At this, Watanuki has to frown. "Why? He seems so well-behaved. And he's intelligent, quite attentive."

She tips her head in agreement, and what might have been a smile is more a look of hard-won wisdom, with perhaps just a hint of cynicism. "His family all think so. But he sees things very much his own way. It's like that old saying, he steps to the beat of a different drummer."

Whereas school life, as Watanuki too well recalled, was all about cooperation with others, and learning to march in time with everyone else. Funny how the memory of some pains never faded; to this day he can remember the stinging and chafing, trying to force himself into a slot where he could never manage to fit, because for all the effort he put forth, the spirits and sights that plagued him always got the final say. And it was never worse, or more scathingly apparent, than in every single year of school he'd attended.

"You could say I was the same, a long time ago," he mentions. Adding with a rueful smile, "Only I more rolled on the ground and tried to beat off spirits attacking me. If my parents had still been alive, I'm sure they would have been called constantly."

Now she looks to him, both curious and troubled on his behalf.

"I....just realized, I owe Watanuki-sama an apology. I never think of you living outside this place, in the normal world. Doing the same things everyone else does. But the age you've always looked--it wasn't easy for you out there, was it."

"That's why I don't regret being here, I guess," he smiles back faintly. "It was difficult, more than I realized at the time. I tried to never think...." He pauses and sighs. "You remember I'm sure; in high school, all you really want is to be normal. Like everyone else. Do well in classes, get along with friends. Date the person you dream of."

He chuckles and shakes his head. "But the girl I dreamed of had a curse that almost killed me by accident. And regardless, because of what I've turned out to be, that normal life was never meant for me. I understand that I'm fortunate to be here now, because this is really the only place I could live. Nowhere else would work."

Haruka has turned to listen to him fully, and now her eyes hold a look of profound sympathy. Not pity (he can't imagine Doumeki eyes could ever truly convey pity), but rather the understanding some people reach, when they have struggled through a major life challenge, only to meet someone who has had it even harder than themselves.

And then he spots something in her that snags at him; an expression he has only ever seen from two people in his whole recollection. He's never properly known the word for it, maybe there isn't one. But he remembers it from Yuuko, and from that spirit-woman he'd visited awhile during high school, before she almost did him in.

"Watanuki," says Haruka softly. "Kimihiro-kun." She scoots up on her knees, closer to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. And though Watanuki is decades and decades older than she, suddenly for the first time in a very long time, he feels much younger. He feels the age he looks, and realizes that Haruka looks almost the age that....

That his mother might have looked, back when he was seventeen.

She moves in slowly, giving him all the time in the world to escape, to say _no, wait, this isn't necessary_. But there is a soft sorrow lingering at the edges of her sympathy, maybe it's the sort of thing only certain mothers can feel, beholding a motherless child. Something instinctive, ingrained, and apparently it doesn't matter how many years he's been without anyone resembling a mother; there's something ingrained in him too and just for that moment he feels he couldn't move a muscle to deny her, if his life depended on it.

He rests his cheek on her shoulder, initially frozen with hesitation, smelling the lingering temple incense on her blouse (Shizuka's shirts used to smell like that, and then later so did Kohane's, when she hugged him). Her embrace is so gentle, but no less warm for that, and Watanuki finds himself relaxing, soaking up this moment of pure understanding comfort, freely given.

There was only one exchange that didn't require a price, Yuuko had once told him. The exchange of feelings. And though he's had very little chance to be part of such an exchange the last many years, Watanuki realizes it's something he should make the opportunity for, more often.

"Thank you," he tells her, as they draw back from one other. He's a bit misty-eyed, but unshaken. Without knowing it, he'd needed that embrace, and there's no reason it should hurt him.

"Is it all right?" she asks, with a small frown, looking like she wants to fix a strand of his hair or something, but is choosing to restrain herself.

He just nods at first, needing a moment to collect himself before he can answer properly. He hasn't run into this dichotomy in so long he's forgotten how to manage it; the strange, confounding rift between the person he once was, and what this shop and his ages-old wish have made him. It's more disconcerting than anything he's had to deal with in a long time.

But then he thinks that Haruka's gesture, it was necessary for them both. And she should understand why.

"I have met some people, over the years, who've lived even longer than me, and never aged," he tells her. "When enough time passes, when they lose contact with everything familiar to them, and everyone dear to them eventually passes on....those people forget what it is, to be human. They can't belong to this world anymore, and they don't belong in the next. And I've always thought, how awful that would be."

He drops his shoulders and sighs, because in truth there are times he's been actively terrified of such a fate. To lose his humanity, to lose what memories he still has of those he's loved. It would be worse than anything he can imagine. The most horrible slap in the face, for all the years he's given up, here.

"That can't happen to you," says Haruka, shaking her head and sounding nearly fraught. "It mustn't. We--our family can't let that happen. My grandmother told me, and my father told us at least once a year, that so long as you're in this shop, someone in our family must always keep in contact with you."

Watanuki folds his hands together in his lap, humbled by all the ways Shizuka's family have looked after him. "I'm more grateful for that, than I can say."

This time, when Haruka glances toward the engawa, she no longer appears tired or wary, but rather resolute. "Ryou will be next. Some day, he should take my place, for you."

"If that's what he chooses," Watanuki is careful to put in. "Considering what you've mentioned about his....abilities, I imagine the future will be challenging enough for him. I would like him to know, that he at least can make his own choices."

She turns a slow, solemn look back on him. "I trust you, with him."

 

**

 

Upon returning to the engawa, they find that Ryou has retrieved Watanuki's calligraphy set and picnic blanket from the grass, and folded up the latter as best he could. Now he's propped against the porch post, short legs stretched one over the other, just the way Watanuki often sits out here, contemplating the side of the office building beyond the garden wall.

At Watanuki and Haruka's approach, he climbs up to stand straight, crossing his hands behind him. "Can I say what I picked, now?" he asks.

"By all means. I'm sorry if we kept Ryou-san waiting too long," says Watanuki.  
"I didn't mind. It's nice, here." The boy draws himself up a little taller then, putting his hands straight at his sides, and meeting Watanuki's gaze straight-on.

"Watanuki-sama. I would please like to ask, to swap for the ofuda--."

He breaks off and frowns here, muttering, "Oops, I forgot," before ducking to retrieve the paper in question from Watanuki's small writing desk, and then presenting it in a formal manner, with both hands. "For giving Watanuki-sama this, for his friends, can I please ask to come back, and learn how to make better ones?"

"You're requesting....calligraphy lessons?" asks Watanuki, just to clarify. He's fairly certain he's never heard this particular wish before, and it intrigues him.

"Yes please," nods Ryou. "Watanuki-sama said the ofuda at our temple keep it safe and pure. So I want to learn to make ones like that. For our temple."

"Hm." Watanuki mulls the idea over, while kneeling down so that he and Ryou can talk more or less eye-to-eye. "That is an admirable goal to have. But I have to tell you, I don't think it's something I could teach in just a few lessons. Even for me, it took many years of practice, before I could make ofuda suitable for your family's temple."

"Oh." Ryou's formal posture deflates a little, and he frowns down at the porch.

"I do think it's worth pursuing," Watanuki puts in, not wanting to discourage him. "But perhaps you should spend time learning the proper skills from a calligraphy sensei, first. I'm sure your mother could help, and even find someone for you to study under."

Ryou considers this gravely, and then nods. "Okay. Then can I ask for something else?"  
"Please," Watanuki offers, doing his best to match the boy's gravity.

"It can't be right now, because we have to go home soon. But could I come back some day, when Mama comes, and could I ask Watanuki-sama why this eye--," pointing to his own right eye, "--looks like mine and Mama's?"

Watanuki is briefly taken aback, thinking really he shouldn't be, since clearly very little escapes this child's notice.

"I'm not sure that's a wise idea, dearest," puts in Haruka, gently, behind him. "Remember how we talked about asking personal things?"

"It's all right," says Watanuki, glancing briefly up to Haruka, before looking back to Ryou and nodding. "What happened to my eye involves your great-grandfather Shizuka-san. And there is a lesson in it, which might be useful to you someday."

He reaches out both hands to accept the ofuda from Ryou, and then bows and thanks him. "When you and your mother have the time, come back and we can have dinner together, and I'll tell you both the story. Is that all right?"

"Yes, Watanuki-sama. Thank you. And thank you for talking to me today," Ryou says, as self-possessed and serious as any businessman.

"Thank you for being my guests today," Watanuki smiles back. "I am very glad I could meet you."

 

**

 

After escorting the two out to the front gate, Watanuki takes a break for a much-needed smoke, and then takes time to fix the new ofuda to the outer door of the bedroom where Mokona, Moro, and Maru rest. He has debated more than a few times over recent years, whether he should peek in and check on them, or perhaps dust and air the place out. But intuition tells him the room won't require dusting or airing so long as they sleep, and that more critically, his intrusion could well wake them before the right time.

He isn't sure when that right time will come, but as with most things nowadays, he's bound to know when it does.

 

**

 

"So when is your new apprentice coming to work?" asks Ame-Warashi, eying the tray of tea cakes he'd offered just the same as she always does; like she's the one doing him a favor.

"I beg your pardon, but I'm not sure who you mean." Watanuki had learned generations ago, that no matter how baffling and cryptic she could be, the only way to deal with Ame-Warashi, was to smile affably at whatever she said. Even when she threw him completely for a loop and then scowled at his perplexity, like now.

"One would think by now, you would've given up with the innocent act," she sniffs. "It was never appealing."

"I'm honestly sorry," says Watanuki, still smiling away. "I don't know what you might have heard, but to my knowledge, I'm not taking on any apprentices. Can I offer you more tea?"

Ame-Warashi looks down her nose at her cup. "I suppose I could stand another sip, if you'll stop being obtuse. Everyone knows that boy from the temple will end up here. He's as impossible to miss as you are."

Watanuki concentrates carefully on refilling their cups, and maintaining his polite exterior. He wouldn't put it past her to drop a thing like this on his head, and then refuse to explain anything solely because she felt he'd looked at her the wrong way.

"If it's Doumeki Ryou you're thinking of, please forgive me, but I have to say it's too soon to be making any assumptions about him. Even by....human standards, he's still a young child."

Ryou was ten now; years that had seemed to fade in the space of a few breaths for Watanuki. Not more than two or three times a year, Haruka had brought him to visit, and on occasion kept Watanuki abreast of Ryou's progress at school, the calligraphy lessons he was keeping up with, and the extracurricular lessons she was attempting to give him, with regard to his sight.

Thus far, Ryou had yet to formulate any specific wish for Watanuki to fulfill. Though he had sometimes brought questions which his mother couldn't answer, along with some token gift of exchange; a new set of kitchen towels, a quality calligraphy brush bought with the allowance money he'd saved. The items were always things he'd chosen himself and every time, Watanuki found himself pleased and surprised, at how adeptly Ryou calculated the correct price for his requests, all on his own.

"It's only a matter of time," Ame-Warashi insists, taking up her teacup. "When our world takes notice of a human around these parts, they usually end up here. And if he isn't taught properly, he could end up being an even worse nuisance than you were."

Watanuki would like to believe this couldn't be relevant in Ryou's case, but the sharp concern he feels at her words tells him it's a very real possibility. He certainly hasn't forgotten his own experience, coming under the notice of the spirit world, or rather bumbling and struggling through it, and all the enormous trouble his ignorance had cost.

And if that weren't enough, there was that warning from grandfather Haruka, so very long ago. That power unrestricted, undisciplined, was like a wish made without the right exchange; sooner or later, there would be dire consequences attached. He further understands that in her prickly high-handed manner, Ame-Warashi is actually advising him to be careful of that eventuality. As with most things she's cautioned him about, he would ignore her at his own peril.

"I should be sure and look out for him then," he muses aloud, and then discreetly turns the round tray of cakes, so Ame-Warashi can reach the blue frosted ones she seems to prefer. "I don't suppose....of course I'm sure you're occupied with more important things. But maybe you'd recall noticing, whether there was any trouble involving Ryou-san recently?"

She glances from her teacup, down to the tray, and then up to him with one sternly arched brow, not fooled a bit by his extra show of thoughtfulness.

"Hmph. Not yet," is all she says.

 

*****


	8. Chapter 8

(8)

 

He's riding in an elevator. The old-fashioned kind, with brass handrails, and a brass grille accordion door. As the elevator rises, Watanuki watches the floor indicator; antique cast bronze, shaped like a sundial, with an arrow moving clockwise to indicate his progress.

Although progress to where, he can't say, since instead of floor numbers on the indicator, there's only a random-looking collection of symbols around its face. An iris, a Greek letter he can't place offhand, a dragonfly, a skeleton key. Currently the indicator shows him about nine-o-clock on the dial, passing a cast bronze hare, on the way to a curved maple leaf.

The elevator's motion is smooth and soundless, and Watanuki is quite aware that he's dreaming. Given the lack of any apparatus to select a floor, and that the carpeting under his bare feet looks suspiciously like a section of the rug in the rear parlor, he thinks it safe to assume this is not one of those traveling dreams, where he visits a real place. It's just a normal sleeping dream, albeit a fairly vivid one.

The floor indicator passes the maple leaf, goes on to a straw sandal. The next symbol, at twelve o'clock, is a stalk of bamboo. But he doesn't make it there, because less than half past the straw sandal, the elevator stops moving. There's no noise of machinery, no sudden jolt from some malfunction. It just stops.

He tries the accordion door first, but it won't budge. Though beyond it there's a pair of oak panels, apparently the outer doors, with a small square glass window set in the left panel. Standing on tiptoe, he peers through; darkness, until he shades the glass with both hands cupped around his face.

A tatami floor in a dark room, is what he sees. He's just a bit above eye-level to it, and at first the perspective is confusing, until he realizes he's actually standing between floors. The straw sandal floor, and the bamboo floor, to be exact. There's something familiar about that; straw sandals and a bamboo tree, though at the moment he's more concerned with how he's supposed to get out of this elevator.

"Hello?" he tries calling. "Excuse me, is anyone there?"

Nothing changes in the room. He makes out a shaded window, a dark lump on the floor at the far end of the room. Someone's futon, perhaps? "Hello," he calls more loudly, rattling on the accordion door. "Is there anyone who could help me?"

After a long silent moment, he decides there isn't, so he turns his attention back to the accordion door, thinking there's a latch or something he might have missed. He feels around the door frame, inside and out, and is just going down on his knees to see if the latch might be there, when he hears something.

Ringing. A telephone. He tries pressing his ear to the brass grille, near the seam of the oak panels, but it doesn't seem the sound gets stronger there.

 _ringring........ringring_ It's an old bell telephone, the kind no one has used in forever. Except for him.

That's the ringing of the shop telephone. And the instant he realizes this, he knows that the way out of here is not through this stuck door. It's behind him.

"Of course," he says to the oak-paneled elevator wall, as he turns to face it. He puts his palm to the wood and then, just because he has a feeling about this, reaches down for the brass handrail instead.

"Wake up now," he tells himself, and pushes the rail....

....tilting down for a dizzying second into darkness...

And landing on his back with a distinct thump, wide awake in his own bed. Where he hears the hall telephone, still ringing.

"Hello?" he says, for the third time, standing in his bare feet in the chilly hallway. He hadn't wasted time turning a light on, and he has no idea of the time. Ungodly late o' clock, from the feel of it.

But there's no answer to his greeting; nothing but an open phone line, with some faint unidentifiable sound on the other end.

It's dark, it's cold, and though he seldom receives any phone calls, he still remembers that calls at this hour are seldom good news. He tugs the stray flaps of his sleeping kimono around himself, even knowing it won't do much for the chill he's feeling.

"Hello, is someone there? Can I help you?"

A long silence, punctuated by a sniff that makes him jump a little. "Watanuki-sama?" says a small, whispery voice.

"Yes, I'm sorry but who--Ryou-san, is that you?"

"Are you okay, Watanuki-sama? Has something bad happened to you?" Ryou's voice is still nearly a whisper, but urgent, rough with imminent tears.

"I'm fine," answers Watanuki, baffled. "I was just sleeping. What's wrong, Ryou-san, are you all right?"

Another sniff, and all at once Watanuki pictures the boy vividly, seated on the floor in a dark room, knees drawn up and hunched over the telephone, trying with all his might not to cry.

"I--I just saw something bad, when I was asleep. Watanuki-sama was in a black place, and there was a lady, but she was coming apart, and Watanuki-sama was crying, but you couldn't move.....it scared me, I was scared it was happening, and--"

"Shh, calm down, you don't have to worry. It was just a dream," Watanuki soothes. "I'm here talking to you, and everything's fine, see?"

" _But it was so real_. I could--I could see the lady's kimono, she had long, long hair, and she was so sad. And Watanuki-sama had on a school uniform, just like the high school kids. You didn't have glasses, I saw that, and you looked hurt, I was scared you might die...."

Watanuki had meant to stop him, calm him down, but at the mention of the school uniform he freezes stiff, feels all the blood drain from his face.

"What--where was this place, do you remember?" he gets out.

"No. It was all dark. Not like a dark room. Like _forever_ dark. And the dark was taking the lady away, it was eating her up. And--and Watanuki-sama said.... _I still haven't granted your wish. I promised..._ "

"...that I would grant it," Watanuki fills in, sliding down the wall next to the telephone table, nerveless, numb, stunned.

"It was real." For all its hushed softness, Ryou's voice strikes the exact note of heartbreak Watanuki had felt on that night, so very very long ago. "It happened, that lady was real and--is she okay? What happened to her?"

"She was real. But she's gone now." Watanuki wipes a hand down his face, and how strange, that after so much time, the memory of that encounter is as fresh a wound as if it had just been struck. "You saw Yuuko-san. And me, a very long time ago. Your dream, that was when she....went away. When me and your great-grandfather were in high school."

"Gone...." says Ryou, with a break in his voice. "I was. I've never been that scared. I wanted to do something. But....I tried really hard, and I couldn't reach you. It's like--like I wasn't there."

"That's because you weren't," says Watanuki gently. "You saw something in the past. And the past can't be changed. But please don't worry, Ryou-san. It was very sad, at that time. But I'm okay now."

He stifles a sigh, thinking he really doesn't want to go back to bed with that memory on his mind. Though more importantly, Ryou himself shouldn't have to be haunted by such a thing.

"Try to put it out of your mind, hm?" he offers. "There's no reason you should be unhappy over it. And it must be too late for you to be up. Your mother would worry, I'm sure."

"That's why I didn't wake her up," Ryou murmurs back. "I just. I had to make sure Watanuki-sama was okay. I'm uh. Sorry I woke you up, too."

Briefly, Watanuki debates over how to respond. On the one hand, if Ryou's dreams are showing him things no normal person could have seen, things serious enough to terrify him to tears, he will need someone to share them with, and help him understand them. On the other hand, if the situation should persist, Watanuki is aware he could be opening himself up for years of late-night phone calls.

Well, he decides. It's not as though he can't afford to lose sleep now and then. And going by Ame-Warashi's recent prediction, he would be wise to stay informed of just these sorts of incidents.

"You don't have to apologize," he tells Ryou. "I understand how it must have seemed necessary. And it was very kind of you, to check in on me. I promise that everything is all right, though...." he pauses a moment, thinking.

"Sometimes people's dreams bring them important messages. I can't say why Ryou-san dreamed about that time, but maybe it would be smart, if you were careful for the next few days. You're good about noticing things, so keep an eye out, okay? Just to be safe."

"Oh. Yeah, I'll do that." There comes a quiet sigh, and then, "Thank you. I'm glad you're okay."

**

After hanging up, Watanuki goes to the kitchen and pours himself a snifter of brandy. He's unsettled, and not at all interested in enjoying a drink alone at the moment. So he sips his drink standing, one arm propped on the kitchen counter, contemplating this space where he has spent so many hours over so many ages.

In the darkest hush of night, with just the light over the oven on, it looks different in here. Like a kitchen in someone else's house, maybe. A normal house, belonging to people with normal lives. Though of course all the fixtures and appliances would look ancient, to average people nowadays. A few years ago on a whim, Haruka had brought him a home decorating magazine from the grocery, and looking at the advertisements for ovens, washers, refrigerators, they looked like things that belonged in space ships, to him.

He lives in a time capsule, in just about every sense of the word. And tonight, for reasons beyond his understanding, that capsule has been upended, stirring up dust and sediments which he'd been quite content to leave settled deep at the bottom of his memories.

Why now, of all times, should he be dragged from sleep to remember Yuuko's departure? What in the world would have put such a thing in that innocent child's head, making him suffer the most painful memory in all Watanuki's recollection?

Of course on this topic, the shop kitchen has no answers. And so, tossing back the last of the brandy for what fortification it might offer him, he heads off for the storeroom.

**

Tonight, the room is clean and absolutely still. He walks down the line of shelves in his cold bare feet, arms wrapped around him. He looks up and down the arrangement of boxes, trunks, cloth bundles, and then he just lets his gaze wander, looking at nothing in particular. Sometimes, this is the best way to find something here, just standing in the middle, waiting, listening.

But nothing comes forth. All he hears is perfect silence. He turns on his heels to look at that exact spot on the floor, where he'd first picked up Yuuko's kimono; a dead crumpled wrapping which had enveloped something larger than life itself, to him. He remembers when he'd first drawn it over his shoulders, how cold and empty it had felt. There had been nothing at all left of her there. No lingering scent, no hint of warmth, no indication at all of the extraordinary presence once within it.

"Why?" he asks the room. Looking up to the rafters, off to the far wall, staring into the shadows, waiting for anything.

But aside from him, and dozens of lifeless objects, the storeroom is entirely empty.

"I promised," he tells the emptiness, just in case. "And I haven't forgotten. I won't forget."

**

Two days later, a customer arrives, sent from the Doumeki temple. Before stating his wish, he gives Watanuki a tall decorative gift bag, embellished with a floppy hand-tied bow. He was asked to deliver this especially, he tells Watanuki, with thanks from the Doumeki's youngest son.

Upon opening the bag, Watanuki discovers a young bamboo plant, in a rustic pot decorated around the outside with woven straw.

It's a challenge, keeping his focus on the customer's wish after this, and as soon as their business is concluded, the instant after he sees the man out the door and closes it, he hastens off to the storeroom.

There's a book in here, an old folklore textbook that Shizuka had foisted off on him after his third year of college, and refused to take back. In a fit of annoyance (because as he'd emphatically told Shizuka at the time, and on numerous other occasions, he was not a dumping ground for Shizuka's unwanted junk) Watanuki had taken the book to the storeroom, stuffed it on a random shelf, and left it. Following its own capricious moods, the storeroom moved the book around periodically over the decades, and whenever he came across it, Watanuki huffed and dusted around it.

But once or twice, purely out of boredom, he had actually opened the book. And now he remembers, with Ryou's bamboo plant in a straw-wrapped pot sitting in the rear parlor, that there is a significant story in there. A story involving straw sandals and a bamboo tree.

Watanuki's initial plan is to check the story, and then phone Ryou directly and ask him, _Did you really know?_ Because how could he have known what Watanuki was dreaming the other night, before the phone awoke him? Stuck on that elevator, between a straw sandal and a bamboo plant, peering through the little glass window into a dark room.

The fact he'd dreamt of Watanuki's past was potentially serious enough, but only two people had ever been able to enter Watanuki's dreams and see what he saw, and neither of them were actually alive, as it had turned out. If Ryou had seen Watanuki's dream....well, Watanuki has no idea what he'll do, but he'll have to do something.

With this urgent thought, he strides into the storeroom, all business, and stands in the center with his hands on his hips.

"All right, listen," he announces. "It galls me enough to say that Shizuka was right, _again_ , giving me a book I wouldn't need for....eighty-something, ninety whatever, years," flapping a hand irritably. "I know you still have it somewhere, because you love needling me with it, and rest assured I will absolutely tear this place apart for it if I....have....to."

He trails off because the book is already sitting out in plain sight, on a little round accent table, in a helpful patch of sunlight from the nearby window. And there's not so much as a speck of dust on it.

"Right," he says, with no wind at all in his sails. "Well. That was very prompt. Thank you."

**

The story goes more or less just as he remembers. But after reading it over a few times, Watanuki realizes he needs to think about the implications, carefully, before saying anything to Ryou.

It's a variation on the Tanabata legend; the most common version involving Orihime the weaver and the herder Hikoboshi, as lovers who could only meet across the Milky Way once a year.

Only in this telling, it's the farmer Mikeran who was separated from his wife, the goddess Tanabata. She promised the farmer she'd return to him, if he could weave a thousand pairs of straw sandals, and bury them under a certain bamboo tree. Unfortunately, Mikeran could not complete the task before he died and so never saw Tanabata again in his life. Though as legend has it, they could still meet once a year, in the form of stars intersecting in the night sky.

Taken a face value, Watanuki assumes the symbols nudging their way into his dream are fairly straightforward. Like the farmer Mikeran, he himself is in the midst of a seemingly impossible task, waiting for someone he may well never see again. His dream had put him stuck midway, between the straw sandal and the bamboo tree, which he can only conclude signified his current place in his promise to Yuuko.

But the fact that Ryou had called in the midst of that dream, this is where Watanuki senses trouble. Because as he has learned so very well, coincidence is nothing but an excuse invented by people unwilling or unable to unravel the truth in their circumstances.

Doumeki Ryou's call had interrupted his dream. And he had left that stuck elevator, in order to answer it. Whatever this will turn out to mean, Watanuki knows it is not knowledge appropriate for a ten-year-old. For the time being, he cannot burden this boy, with the responsibility which always comes due, when one glimpses their fate. Regardless of whether the fate in question seems unavoidable, Ryou still has the power of choice. And for Watanuki--who in so many respects was never given such a luxury--that choice, that opportunity to live his own life, and grow up unburdened by the darker side of fate's responsibilities, must be guarded as long as possible.

It is for this reason, that Watanuki puts the old textbook back on a shelf in the storeroom, and waits. He waits until the bamboo plant is outgrowing its little pot, and he has to replant it in an open part of the front yard, where he can just see it from his room, with the doors open wide to the spring breeze.

The pot itself, he cleans carefully and puts on his bedroom shelf next to Haruka's book. Unsurprisingly, it looks nice there.

**

One moment it's spring, the next it's bright ripe summer, and on a calm early morning, the phone rings again.

"Watanuki-sama? I'm sorry if I woke you up. I tried to wait this time." Of course it's Ryou, voice as hushed as the dim early light, and Watanuki smiles wryly to himself. Knowing, the way he knows these things, that at some point in the near future Ryou will be the only Doumeki child allowed to have a telephone in his own room. It will cause drama amongst his siblings, which will lead to Watanuki having a drinking visit with their mother, before long.

"Good morning, Ryou-san," he says, still smiling, thinking it's been ages since he'd had really good champagne. "Had another dream, did you? Everything all right?"

"I guess. Yeah," sighs Ryou heavily. "I've had a bunch of dreams. But this one. I couldn't go back to sleep. I didn't want to bother you...."

"Wait," says Watanuki, his smile slipping. "You mean you've had others? Like the one you called about before?"

"They weren't scary," says Ryou. "They were just dreams about you. Last night, though. That one was scary. There was a monster, it was nighttime on this street, and this thing attacked you, like a big, I dunno, a big black cloud. But it was.... _ugly_ , and mean. It was trying to eat you up, and choke you at the same time."

Ryou pauses for breath, and Watanuki comments, "That actually used to be common, for me. Things like that used to chase me, all kinds of spirits. That's why I came to work in this shop."

"But that's _awful_ ," breathes Ryou. "How come you couldn't make them go away? In my dream, I--I think I was somebody else. I came up on a horse? And I had this big yumi, like the one in our altar-room, and I shot the monster. But you couldn't do anything, it just knocked--."

"I'm sorry," Watanuki interrupts, as soon as he finds his voice. "You said you shot it? From horseback?"  
"Yeah, I haven't even started kyudo lessons yet, but I knew how to do it, it was so weird...."

Finding himself sliding down the wall yet again, Watanuki thinks a bit dazedly, that he should really get a chair next to this phone.

"I had that dream. God. So long ago. It was Haruka-san....your great-grandfather's grandfather. He shot the ayakashi. From a white horse--." Watanuki realizes the shock has knocked his composure clean out. He shouldn't be rambling like this, lest he say something too costly.

But then Ryou swallows, audibly. "I was on a white horse. But. How come I had your dream? People can't _do_ that."

Before answering, Watanuki thinks of the bamboo plant, now on its way to becoming a healthy little tree in his front yard. Is it enough? Is it too little? The price of information is so much trickier to calculate than a straightforward wish. And nothing is straightforward about the story of this dream, or why it might be rippling back from the opposite shores of time, now.

"Ryou-san. I'm sorry. Please understand, I would much prefer if I could just give you all the answers to your questions."

For a moment, silence. And then Ryou's tone is flat, quiet. "But there's a price."

"I'm sorry," Watanuki repeats, and he truly, deeply is, knowing too well how powerless Ryou must feel, having once felt the exact same way himself. "These aren't my rules. They're the shop's rules. And I know they seem unfair to you. For what it's worth, it seems unfair to me too."

Ryou's voice remains flat, but what he says surprises Watanuki. "It's not unfair. And Watanuki-sama shouldn't have to pay. I don't want you to get hurt."

Watanuki has no idea what to say to this, but he knows the situation has gone beyond what they should discuss on the phone. Business like this should be conducted in person, face to face.

"Ryou-san. Could you ask your mother today, if she has time to bring you by the shop?"

"My mom's busy," Ryou sighs. "Because my brother is being a jack--uh. Sorry, I mean a hassle. My dad had to ground him, and now they're all mad. But I know how to get there. I mean, if you don't mind, if it's just me."

"Of course I don't mind." Although Ryou couldn't see it, Watanuki is having to bite back a smile at that moment of unvarnished frankness. "Though your mother and I would both appreciate, if you asked her permission. When she's not busy."

"Yeah. I'll ask. Tomorrow's okay?"  
"Any day soon is fine," Watanuki assures him. "My schedule is always free."

 

*****


	9. Chapter 9

(9)

 

Ryou arrives around lunchtime the next day, with a diffident expression, bearing a two-tier bento, and a couple of grocery bags.

"Um. Mom was making lunch for her club, so I asked if I could help. This is kind of extra."

Watanuki takes the bento off his hands, pleased, and leads him to the kitchen so they can sort everything out. "Ah, you made spring rolls, yourself?" he asks, peeking in the bento.

"Mom showed me. I'm not sure if they're okay. And I got some drinks at the market," indicating the shopping bags. "I didn't know what you'd like."

The first thing Watanuki pulls out is a bottle of Bubblegum Ramune soda, and he has to laugh in delight. "They still make these? I can't believe it." There's also canned coffee (a brand he doesn't recognize), melon cream soda, a cola bottle full of gelatin beads instead of liquid, which he never recalls having seen before, ginger soda, chocolate soda, and a clear cider in a lovely blue glass bottle.

He's lining up the drinks on the counter, when all at once he _remembers_ , with startling clarity. Bright-lit vending machines, convenience stores with their rows of refrigerated shelves, sitting in the park with a cold canned soda on a hot afternoon, pressing it against his forehead, and wiping away the condensation. These small simple things he'd forgotten about completely, they were still out there in the world, people still enjoyed them....

"What's the matter? Watanuki-sama?" Ryou leans in with a little frown, and Watanuki realizes he's lost his own smile, somewhere along the way. Melancholy, is what he feels now, tracing a finger over one cold bottle.

"Which one is your favorite?" he asks Ryou, whose frown goes a little doubtful at him, before he looks over at the drinks.  
"I dunno. Mom never gets these for us. But I guess. The chocolate soda?"

Watanuki takes a breath, straightens himself and finds his smile again. There will be plenty of time for melancholy and the ache of old memories later; right now he has gift more valuable than his gift-giver realizes. "Then you take that one. I want to try the Ramune."

They take their drinks and lunch out to the engawa in front; no formalities this time, just an impromptu picnic between friends. Of course Ryou spots the bamboo tree right away, as he's sitting down.   
"Your plant's gotten really big. Wow."  
Watanuki only nods, seating himself as he works the lid off his Bubblegum soda.

"Y'know how to get the marble down?" asks Ryou, scooting in to offer his assistance with the bottle, but Watanuki grins and waves a hand.  
"Hey, I was an expert at this. It's not something you really forget." He pops the marble down from the neck of the bottle, and raises it up to Ryou. "Cheers."

And oh, it's obscenely sugary. No wonder Haruka doesn't keep these at home for her children; he can practically feel his teeth crying in protest. Even Ryou is wincing a bit with his chocolate soda, though he's clearly determined to enjoy it.

"So I'm wondering," he says, resting the bottle on his knee, looking over the amateur assembly of their bento; definitely not Haruka's work. "Whether Ryou-san knows about buying dreams?"

"Buying?" Ryou discreetly dabs his mouth with the back of his hand. "You can do that?"  
"Hm," Watanuki nods. "Since you were the one to bring lunch today, which was wise, I wondered if you knew."

"Nope. I just." Looking down at the untidy collection of spring rolls, he shrugs "I just thought I should bring this. How do you buy dreams?"

"The same way you buy wishes. Only someone tells you their dream, and you give them something equal to it. That's how I had that same dream you had, the other night. Your great-grandfather Shizuka-san told me a dream he'd had on New Years about his grandfather, and took some cookies that I'd made. I didn't know it at the time, but I bought his dream that way. And that's how I first met Haruka-san, who came and shot the ayakashi."

"Then it _was_ the same yumi," Ryou muses, half to himself. "So then. Since I brought lunch, does that mean I'm gonna buy a dream from you?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "No, it means that I'm not going to buy your dreams, when you tell me about them today."

Ryou has to take a moment, puzzling out the logic there. "Oh. You mean since you're not giving lunch to me."  
"Exactly."

"Huh. That was pretty smart." And with that, he graces Watanuki with an extraordinarily rare expression; a lopsided, boyish grin, of the sort Watanuki had never seen from Shizuka, or his granddaughter, and never before on this child.

Its easy brightness startles him, enough that he nearly loses his grasp on the bottle on his knee. Because for one brief moment, with that smile crinkling his eyes, Ryou resemblance to Shizuka's grandfather is uncanny, and Watanuki hasn't let himself think in so very long, how much he's missed Haruka's smile. Not in all this time, not until now, has he ever seen any smile like it.

Just in time, Watanuki remembers he's meant to smile along too, and he does, because he can't not encourage this. An actual grin from a Doumeki, priceless. He should take a photo and frame it, for posterity.

So much does he want to keep Ryou in good spirits, that he puts off any further serious discussion for later, instead declaring that they should eat lunch. During which they discuss whether Ryou is interested in cooking (not really, though he thinks frying things is fun), what subjects he prefers in school (P.E. and Geography, because he likes studying maps), and a good book he picked up recently, about a boy his age who got shipwrecked on a desert island with a horse, and how they made friends.

All in all, it's the most casual, comfortable lunchtime conversation Watanuki's had in at least a year; the last he recalls was when the hawk gardener had dropped in for the day to look in on the barberry hedge. And he could think about the irony here, how his social sphere was looking awfully meager if this was the best he could do, but in all honesty, he is at least a lifetime past those sorts of judgments. Friendly company, free of obligations, is a gift; whether the company is a gardener from the spirit world, or a ten-year-old boy, he knows to appreciate every moment of another person sharing their time with him.

But then he asks about Ryou's family, and suddenly Ryou is no longer smiling.

"They're all fine, thanks. Mom said to tell you hello." It's like watching a windowshade drop, and Ryou at once becomes the serious, polite, guarded person Watanuki has always seen.

Except that now it's different, because having had a glimpse of someone happier, Watanuki understands that all along he's been seeing a mask. A Doumeki mask; maybe they were handed them at birth, who knows. But Watanuki has seen, and will not forget, that Doumeki Ryou is capable of being someone different.

"Did things work out all right with your brother?" Watanuki asks. "You mentioned he was in some trouble."

"Kiyoshi," Ryou rolls his eyes with the disgust that only a boy with an elder brother could properly convey. "He's fine, he's just dumb. He got caught ditching kyudo club, 'cos of some _girl_. And mom was really mad. Grampa got mad too, and then Kiyoshi got mad and said he didn't even want to take kyudo. It was a whole mess."

"Hm," Watanuki nods sympathetically, since it's really all he can do. He'd never had siblings, or parents to rebel against, and for all his arcane knowledge of this world and a few others, he knows nothing at all about parenting teenagers.

"Anyway." Ryou eyes the level in his soda bottle, before finishing it off. "I guess I should tell you about those dreams, now?"

"If you have questions about them," Watanuki allows. Ryou has paid in advance for his advice, but experience has taught Watanuki that people don't always end up needing advice about the topics they bring to him. If he leaves room for it, the discussion may just as likely drift unexpected places; the necessary places, most often.

"Well. Yeah." Ryou crosses his arms over his knees, pensive, gazing off to the little bamboo tree in the yard. "You told me that first dream was a thing that happened to you. Was anybody else there, besides you and...uh--."

"Yuuko-san?" Watanuki provides. "No, it was just us." But then, he realizes, that isn't entirely true. "Shizuka showed up later. I remember asking him if he saw Yuuko-san. And he had, but only through this eye," pointing to his right eye, the one he'd shared with Shizuka.

"He could see stuff through your eye. You told me that, when I was a little kid."  
"Before I learned to control it, yes."

"Hm." Ryou's gaze turns distant again, before he says, "And that dream the other night. I was--I guess I was Grandfather Haruka-san? I was shooting his yumi. Except. That wasn't a thing that really happened, it was just a dream you'd had, right?"

"But I still had the arrow, afterward. Yuuko-san said it was a prophetic dream. Back then, I sometimes went into dreams, and real things happened to me. I lost my glasses once, in a dream. Another person found them, and brought them back to me a long time later."

Ryou looks to him in open fascination, with a touch of concern. "Was it scary, when that stuff happened?"  
"It was. There were times when I wasn't sure what was real. If I was awake, or asleep, it got hard to tell. For awhile I was afraid I was disappearing."

"Some of my dreams, it seems like you are," Ryou says. "Like this one, we were up on top of a building, and you got pushed off by one of those monsters. And I was hanging onto your arm so you wouldn't fall, but the monster was hurting my arm. And then another monster came, it was this humongous snake, like the size of the whole building. And it ate the monster that was hurting me, and I pulled you up."

"Angel," Watanuki murmurs, remembering. "That was Shizuka and me, we were on the roof of a school, and he kept me from falling."

"That happened, for real," Ryou's amber stare is so direct it pins him, and only after the moment stretches out, expectant, does Watanuki realize he's seeking confirmation.

"Yes." Watanuki's throat feels too dry. He desperately wants a drink, something stronger than Bubblegum soda. "I'm sorry, would you mind if I made some tea?" Even though he really wants whisky, tea will doubtless be safer.

"Oh. Sure," Ryou answers, blinking and relieving Watanuki of the force of his gaze.

For seven minutes, Watanuki puts all his concentration into brewing tea and not speculating until he knows more, and then he brings out the tray with two cups, and Ryou continues itemizing his dreams.

Prior to the dream of the school roof, Ryou had dreamed about playing Mah-Jong with Watanuki, Yuuko, and a little black animal that looked like a stuffed toy for little kids, but drank a huge amount of alcohol. That was Mokona, Watanuki explains, one of his friends who are still resting in the back of the house.

Just as Watanuki already knows, they were all at the Doumeki temple in this dream, under that big old sakura tree that Ryou sees every day, where a woman's ghost sat watching them.

"Did you see your great-grandfather Shizuka there?" Watanuki asks, and Ryou shakes his head.  
"I was wearing a high school uniform, though. Just like when I was with you on the building."

Which could only mean that in those dreams, he had taken Shizuka's place. And in the dream where he'd shot an ayakashi to rescue Watanuki, he'd taken Haruka's place.

And these weren't the only instances. Ryou had also dreamed of being in a classroom, pulling a wriggly, furry snake-looking creature from Watanuki's shirt.   
"Mugetsu," Watanuki provides. "He's a kudakitsune. Your mother got to see him once."

Of course this gets Ryou's immediate, eager attention. "You still have it--I mean--him?"  
"He still lives here, but he's been sleeping in his tube," Watanuki nods. "He usually wakes up for a bit in the fall."  
"Could I....could I see him sometime, when he wakes up?"

"I'll be sure and call you," Watanuki promises, with a smile. "Do you remember any other dreams?"

"Eh," Ryou gives a small shrug, turning his teacup in a small, idle circle on the porch. "Not any where stuff happens. There were two, where we were just sitting outside, by your backyard, at night. One time you were playing a shamisen. And I." He presses his lips together for a second, darting Watanuki a quick, sidelong look, and then dropping his voice.

"I was smoking a cigarette. First I was scared, what if Mom caught me. But then I figured out it was just dream."

"Haruka-san was always smoking, when he used to visit me," Watanuki says fondly. But then a little twinge from his conscience makes him add, "Though it's not a healthy habit for people to get into."

"Yeah, 'cos my parents and my sister would kill me," Ryou mutters under his breath.  
Watanuki bites back a chuckle, while Ryou rubs absently at the back of his neck, seeking his previous train of thought.

"Anyway, the other dream. We were eating snacks. And drinking. It was chilly outside." He frowns down toward the lawn, just past the porch. "We were just hanging out, I guess? I dunno."

Which is understandable, Watanuki thinks. Even to this day, he would be hard-pressed to define those quiet evenings, drinking on the engawa with Shizuka. The nights no one sniped at anyone; no one complained about someone's brazen attitude, and no one else complained about the other person always nagging. But even those old well-rehearsed disagreements were not so easy to interpret as they might have looked from the outside.

There had come a point after Shizuka was gone, when Watanuki altogether lost his knack for the denial he'd managed all those years. He simply knew, plain and honest, that along with everything else, he missed their bickering. He knew that his and Shizuka's unorthodox bristly companionship had all along been something worthwhile, something meaningful. He wasn't even embarrassed to compare it to the griping of an old married couple (as others had done long before, while he poured all his fierce energy into ignoring them).

Though in his and Shizuka's case, it had been different. Their arguments had never held the undertone of festering petty resentments, all those decades of little disappointments, that burden of having known a person at their best and too often at their very worst. For them, it was just how they got along; bizarrely compatible and comfortable beneath all the grouching.

As they both got older; after Shizuka was married, after Daisuke was born, the disputes were rare; when they did argue, most of the time Watanuki would swear it was just for old time's sake. And Ryou's dream, it must have been one of those more common peaceable nights.

Perhaps someday, when Ryou was much older, with more experience of friendships, he would understand this. For the time being Watanuki can't think of any explanation which would do it justice, so he lets it lie, in favor of more immediate concerns.

"Would you say these dreams trouble you badly?" he asks, and Ryou has to think about it, with an openly conflicted expression.

"The ones that scared me. When I called you. Those were bad. But the rest....I don't get them. I don't really mind them. I just. I don't get _why_."

"Ah." Watanuki leans back against the porch post, half-wishing he'd brought his smoking box out, but then taking up his tea for a sip instead.

"I had a customer once, many years ago. They'd been suffering terrible dreams, for years, to the point they were afraid to sleep. It was ruining their life. So I sealed those dreams, so they wouldn't come to that person anymore. I could do something like that for you as well, if that was your wish."

"But....that would cost something."  
"There would be a price, yes. Probably quite steep."  
"And if there's a reason I'm having dreams like that," Ryou says, with a certain thoughtful reserve. "Then I won't find out. And the reason....I'll miss out on it."

"That is true," says Watanuki. "For that customer, they were so upset by their dreams, that they didn't care about the reason. Though I think they did miss out on something. But," he shrugs. "They felt they were happier, that way."

"I wouldn't want that," Ryou tells him. "I'd rather know why. That's really what bugs me. I mean, I saw those things happen to you, and it was awful. I felt sick all day, when I woke up. But since you told me it was a long time ago....I mean, I still don't like to think about those bad dreams. But I'm not scared about them anymore."

"Do you tell your family about them?" Watanuki asks, and immediately Ryou shakes his head.  
"No, I. Mom would just worry. And I know she already worries about me. And...." He pauses here, looking torn, looking just how Watanuki remembers having felt countless times; alone and so much smaller than his problems.

"I, uh. I didn't really tell the truth before. About Mom being busy. I mean she is, but she still woulda brought me here if I asked her to. But I know it makes it hard for everybody else. That me and Mom can come here, and Kiyoshi and Shiori and Dad can't. I know I got more attention, 'cos I was, y'know. Different. And my sister and brother get left out, with stuff like that. Mom always tries to make up for it, to make it fair for them. But that's a lot more work for her. I get that now."

Watanuki sits quietly, listening, waiting until Ryou looks up from his knees, and their eyes meet. "I understand that," he says. "You want to be considerate, and not burden others. That isn't a bad way to be, at all. But would you mind some advice?"

Ryou bites his lip, indecisive, and briefly looks back toward the door of the shop. "I dunno. I mean, you already told me a lot, and all I brought was lunch."

It takes Watanuki a second to grasp the logic turning over in Ryou's head. And then he realizes the concern is essentially over credit, that he must have used his up by now. One of these days, he wants to find out where this child got his sense for fair exchange, because it's really quite acute.

"Don't worry, you're going to do a small favor for me later, so I can tell you at least two things."  
"Oh. Like what?"

"First, this is a lesson I learned the hard way, and it's very important. I realize you might not want to trouble the people around you. But if you're hurting yourself in trying to spare others, that only hurts the people who care about you worse. I used to think that I had to suffer everything alone, until I learned how much that made my friends suffer. Please don't make that mistake, Ryou-san. Your family may seem very busy, but I'm sure they care about your happiness. If you need to turn to them for help, you shouldn't hesitate just because it might trouble them. Understood?"

"Yeah...." Ryou pulls in a breath, ready to add something, but then glances to Watanuki, closes his mouth, and only nods. "I understand."

On an instinct, Watanuki waits to catch his eye again, to see if Ryou will finish what he'd just stopped himself from saying. But whatever that thought was, Ryou apparently chooses to keep it to himself, even with the opportunity left hanging in the drawn-out quiet between them.

"So," Ryou eventually says. "You said there were two things you could tell me?"  
"You could ask a question, if you want," Watanuki offers.

"I could ask a ton of questions," Ryou says, sounding remarkably philosophical for his age, which really, Watanuki thinks, shouldn't be at all surprising. "But Mom always says that just because I don't know something today, doesn't mean I won't figure it out later. She said there used to be things you couldn't tell her, that she had to figure out herself. And when she figured it out, she knew lots more than if somebody just gave her the answer."

"I'm glad she taught you that," says Watanuki. "For quite awhile, Yuuko-san said your great-grandfather had no need of this shop. He couldn't see it, because he didn't need to make wishes. Instead, he put all his effort into working things out on his own, that was just the sort of person he was. And even though he was stubborn about things, it made him stronger."

Again Ryou opens his mouth, preparing to speak, and then closes it to think, instead.   
"I was gonna ask how he came here, then. But I don't want that to count, right now. I think if Watanuki-sama has anymore advice, I'd rather have that count."

"I think Ryou-san is good about making choices. I'm sorry to say I don't see that often enough, in people." Watanuki waits until Ryou looks from the bamboo plant in the yard, back to him, and then smiles his encouragement.

"So if it's advice you'd like, here's something I can tell you. I think the dreams you're having, they all seem to be about how your ancestors, Shizuka and Haruka-san, helped me in the past. They were both very strong people, they had unusual talents similar to yours. So it seems to me, that they might have wanted to leave something for you to learn. We know you have gifts that your mother and grandfather didn't. And though I don't know for absolute certain, I would strongly guess that you might be the right person to learn those lessons, from Shizuka and Haruka-san. Does that make sense?"

Thinking it over, Ryou raises up, sitting straighter, and Watanuki has the impression of a weight being lifted from those small shoulders. He sees it in Ryou's countenance too, in his eyes, as what must have been weeks of doubt and worry, clear away.

"Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

And this Watanuki thinks, with his own measure of relief, this is why he does this work. This is what makes it all worthwhile. Offering the right knowledge, at the right time, to help ease another person's burden. There are some problems people cannot solve entirely on their own. And truly, that's what this shop is for, that is the purpose he serves here. He'd never asked for this power he'd been given. He'd never had any real choice regarding it, or the sometimes terrible consequences which had come along with it.

But now. Knowing he can take the pains and difficulties of his own existence, all his many harsh, costly life lessons, and put them to use to help others through their own pains and difficulties. That is something good. Necessary and worthwhile, and every time he's realized this, it goes farther to ease the weight of his own price than anything else could do.

"Instead of being worried about those dreams, I should pay attention to them," Ryou concludes. "Even if I can't do anything in them, I should notice the stuff my great-grandfathers, and the people in them are doing. And what they saw. Is that right?"

"That sounds like a good plan, to start with," Watanuki says. "And maybe as time passes, you'll understand more about the things you see."

"I already know they were both really strong. And braver than anybody, just because of the stuff they saw. Even though it scared me, they never ran away."

Fate certainly makes some odd twists, Watanuki thinks. Because just from what he's heard so far, it seems a great deal as if this business with Ryou's dreams is a sort of after-echo of his mother's wish. She had wanted to know her namesake, she'd dedicated years of her life, forsaking so much else, in a singularly focused effort to find a connection with that man. And now her son's dreams are showing him the world, through grandfather Haruka's eyes.

Perhaps sometime, if the dreams persist and Ryou hasn't already done so, Watanuki might suggest that Ryou share some of those dreams with his mother. He feels no particular need to mention it now; he and Ryou have already talked away much of the afternoon, and the boy has plenty to reflect on, as it is. But he will keep hold of the thought, for later.

Since Ryou seems satisfied with their visit, and ready to return home again, Watanuki asks his help in returning their lunch and tea trays to the kitchen, where he then opens the refrigerator, and explains his request in return for the extra advice.

"This isn't something I can do myself, since I can't leave the shop. So what I'd like you to do, is select one of these drinks you brought, to give to your brother, and one for your sister."

Ryou hesitates. "You want me to take them back?"  
"Not quite," Watanuki lifts a finger. "You gave them to me, which makes them mine to do with as I please, agreed?"  
"Um. Yeah. Sure."

"All right, then what would please me, is to offer something to Kiyoshi-san and Shiori-san, to thank them for sharing their family members with me. Talking with you today, has reminded me that the rest of your family have been generous to share your mother and you with me. In some cases, I know it hasn't been convenient for them. Your father and grandfather understand, because they know about what I've done for your family and your temple, for many years. But your brother and sister deserve my thanks as well. So if they would enjoy any of these drinks, I would be happy to offer them."

Watching Ryou mull it over behind a weighty frown, Watanuki starts to add, "Of course it's only a very small thing. If they wouldn't like it--."

"No," Ryou interrupts. "No, I bet they would. Shiori really likes the cola ball drinks. And Kiyoshi's friends always get that coffee, at the park. Mom won't usually let him have it. But since it came from you, I bet she would. And maybe. Maybe they wouldn't be mad at each other anymore."

He offers Watanuki the second smile of the day, this one warm, genuine and grateful. "That's a really nice thing to do. And smart, too. Thank you, Watanuki-sama."

"Tell them I said thank you, as well." Watanuki returns the smile, with a little bow. "I enjoyed the time we spent today. I'm glad you decided to visit."

Ryou studies him for a moment, most likely formulating another question, but instead he sets about putting the beverages back into the bag he'd brought over, and then Watanuki is seeing him off at the front entrance.

Only there, at the threshold, does he ask. "Can people only come here, if they have wishes, or want to know something? I mean. Do you ever just visit, with anybody? Where you don't have to do something for them?"

To his chagrin, Watanuki actually has to think about this. There was the hawk gardener, last spring. And there was Ame-Warashi, back in....February? Or last December? He remembers it was cold, anyway. But she'd mostly come to lecture him. And borrow a three-hundred-year-old gardening trowel from the storeroom for the afternoon, come to think of it.

Thinking back even further, there'd been the pipe-cleaner's visit. Before Ryou had been born, or thereabouts, dear god was it really that long ago?

"I do get visitors," he hazards. "Not very often. Mostly I see customers." His track record in casual socializing with humans is terrible though, he realizes. The last person he really spent casual time with, without any business of wishes or advising, was Kohane.

"Your great-grandmother and I. We used to play cards once in awhile," he recalls. "And cook together. I always enjoyed that."

"So it's not like, against the rules?" Ryou asks, watching him carefully now.  
"Certainly not that I know of."

"Right. Okay," Ryou nods. "I just wondered."

And apparently that's that. Ryou thanks him for the help and hospitality, and once the polite goodbyes are concluded, he marches off down the front walk to the gate, with a certain decisive, purposeful air. Leaving Watanuki a bit mystified, honestly.

Until a week or so later, when he phones in the middle of a lazy hot afternoon, to ask whether Watanuki knows how to play dominoes.

 

*****


	10. Chapter 10

(10.)

 

It's a frigid November evening, and Watanuki is digging through the pantry, fretting over how he might make satoimo-no-nimono without brown sugar, when the shop's front door opens, and then slams shut hard enough to rattle the front windowpanes.

"Ow, jeez, this wind," declares his visitor from the entry, and Watanuki throws his hands up at the pantry, and heads out to assess the situation.

It's Ryou, as he'd expected, looking thoroughly windblown, rubbing his shoulder and bearing a container wrapped in a distinctive, familiar furoshiki. Which he hadn't expected, but it certainly solves the problem of what to do about dinner.

"I thought you had library study tonight," he says, by way of greeting. Putting his hands on hips, just in case this is one of those nights where he has to shoo Ryou out again, with a stern reminder about the importance of homework.

"I did, I was on my way home. But there was this oden stand on the way. Um. Run by a fox?" Ryou stares down at the container he's holding, as if he's still not entirely sure how it got there.

"Well, bring it to the kitchen. Why aren't you wearing your gloves tonight, it's cold."  
"They're in my bookbag, forgot to put 'em on." Ryou slips off his shoes, heading obediently after Watanuki, to the kitchen. "I said that part about the fox out loud, right?"

"Yes, he's a very good old friend. Did you get to try the oden yet?"  
"He invited me to, but then he said he had this for you, so I thought I should just bring it. Smelled really good though. I'm starving now."

"Get the bowls, and that wood tray under the sink," Watanuki instructs. He takes the oden container from Ryou, but then pauses and steps back, actually looking at him. "Wait. Did you get taller since last week?" He can still look down at the young man, but not by much, and this is actually more surprising than the delivery Ryou had shown up with.

Ryou makes a squinty, self-conscious frown at him. "Mom just asked that yesterday. She said my pants were getting too short again."

"You're going to be huge," Watanuki sighs. "Just like Shizuka."  
"You think?" Ryou actually perks up a bit at this. "That would be cool."

Watanuki manages not to roll his eyes, before turning for the counter. "You should call home, if you're staying for dinner."  
"Already did," answers Ryou, peering into the cupboard under the sink. "And I finished my English paper, and did my Algebra homework, and all that stuff. Dad said to be home by nine."

**

The oden is still piping hot when they bring it to the rear parlor, and possibly even more delicious than Watanuki remembers from last time. "This," he confesses, hard pressed not to swoon over the first bite. "This is my favorite thing about autumn."

Ryou hmms an agreement, devouring his own dinner with the single-minded focus that only a fourteen-year-old boy in the middle of a growth spurt can manage. He polishes off his first serving within a minute, and then looks hopefully toward the tureen between them.

"Man, this is really good. How'd you meet that fox?"  
"The same way you did," Watanuki answers, reaching for his bowl to refill it. Having recognized a Doumeki at his stand, the fox must have gifted them accordingly, because he's reasonably sure there's another two servings still in the tureen. "Only that fox was very young, then. He's the son of the owner I first met."

"That cart isn't really in that street, is it? I mean, most people wouldn't just walk up to it."

"No, it's a bit like this shop. In between worlds, in a way. But at the right time of year, it's able to come a little closer to your world. Something to do with the seasonal change, I think."

"The longer nights," Ryou guesses. "It's like that thing in the air, when winter's almost here. You can kinda smell it, y'know? I felt like something different would happen tonight."

"Hm, I think you could be right." Actually he's dead-on, but this is one of many things Watanuki wants him to learn for himself. "You did remember to thank the fox, yes?"

Ryou grins. "Yeah, I gave him this neat bookmark I had. He was reading a hardback when I showed up, and he was gonna just put it face down. But--," he pauses and chuckles to himself. "Mom and dad _always_ got on us about that, 'cos it breaks the book's spine, right? I guess they really beat it into us, me and my sister are always bugging people to use bookmarks. Anyway, he liked it a lot. And now his book won't get ruined. So I think it worked out even."

Having known Ryou for almost eight years now, Watanuki has learned that his instinct for equal exchanges is simply innate. Ryou has never been able to explain how he knows; there's no conscious reasoning behind it, it's simply one of those odd gifts, like perfect pitch for a musician, or photographic memory.

Although out in the everyday world, where things tend to be chaotic and imbalanced, Ryou's instinct is often more of a hardship than a gift. His family have long tolerated it as a personality quirk, but at school, and with his peers, or even just going about his daily routine, Ryou is troubled by the glaring inequities he encounters, and there are times his response has troubled--if not outright alienated--others. Watanuki has tried to advise him, his parents have tried to advise him, but Ryou is very much a Doumeki, and the things ingrained in him simply go too deep to be swayed by outside influences.

Still, that being said, Watanuki knows he can trust that if Ryou says his bookmark was a fair exchange for the kitsune oden, then it must have been. At least for the portion he's currently consuming.

Out of curiosity, he asks, "Did the fox mention anything he'd like from me?"  
Ryou swallows, ducks his head to dab his mouth on his sleeve, and Watanuki automatically tosses a napkin at him. "Here, sleeves aren't for wiping, you'll leave stains."

"He said he'd like to come by sometime, he wanted to ask you something." Ryou takes a perfunctory swipe at his chin with the napkin, and then drops it between his crossed legs. "Don't get mad, but this fried tofu is the best ever, seriously."

"Of course it is, it's kitsune oden," Watanuki replies archly. "No one makes it better."  
"The fox said your kabocha is still better than anybody's, though. I think so too. Hey, you want to work on that puzzle some more, after dinner? I bet we could finish it by next week."

Four years ago, they had started with dominoes. Then it was board games, and then when Ryou reached middle school, it was card games he picked up from his classmates. After a year of this, Watanuki felt compelled to initiate a serious talk, with Haruka and then Ryou himself, suggesting that Ryou really wasn't obliged to keep Watanuki entertained every week, and might it not be healthier for him to devote more time to people his own age.

At which point Haruka revealed the details of Ryou's problems with children his age, not unlike the difficulties she'd had, and how in spite of both their ongoing efforts, Ryou simply got along easier with adults.

As for Ryou himself. Well, he'd been just about heartbroken. Worrying himself nearly to illness, that he'd offended Watanuki in some way, that in his efforts to form a friendship (which was hard enough for him) he'd been a nuisance. Only then had it dawned on Watanuki, how lonely this boy was. Being the youngest of three children, being separated from the vast majority of people just by knowing all that he knew, the things he saw and comprehended, which his peers and most adults could not. He could attempt to share those things with his family, and while they all accepted it by now, everyone involved was well aware that they didn't properly grasp it.

Only Watanuki understood, when Ryou said he saw a dark smoke hanging over one of the temple's parishioners, days before that person passed away suddenly. Or when Ryou faced down a girl in his elementary school class, announcing that she was the one who'd been stealing money from the charity fundraiser jar, even though he hadn't caught her personally, and no one had even thought to suspect her.

Although her guilt was proven not long after, in the end Ryou was punished far worse than the girl. He was ostracized by all the class, and most of the school, once word got around. Even the adults there looked on him with distrust after that. The worst part of all, was that Ryou hadn't wanted to accuse his classmate, or see her punished. He'd wanted to help her, because he could see too clearly that the stealing was hurting her worse than anyone. He described seeing a sinister black cloud around her, getting worse every day, and he was afraid someday it was going to swallow her up entirely.

His mother believed him, and defended him staunchly to his teachers at school. But Haruka had never seen the kinds of things Watanuki had seen. Like the girl who'd lost her soul to a parasite, sending her on a violent rampage. Or the woman who had literally been killed by the paralyzing dark residue of her compulsive lies. Watanuki had seen these victims when they were too far gone to be saved, he saw them lost forever. And he alone understood that Ryou's actions were brave and vitally necessary.

Likewise, he alone could explain, with the authority of personal experience, that life did not always reward people for doing necessary things. Often as not, circumstances only got harder for those people. But he also emphasized that there was merit in choosing to intervene, even knowing it may make others unhappy with him. He had done this in Kohane's case, and while the fallout had been serious at the time, the benefits of his choice to help had magnified over the years, bringing Kohane and the Doumeki family to a much happier destiny than they would have seen otherwise.

It was this particular lesson which, when Watanuki recalled it, made him decide that Ryou should visit as often as he liked. However, in hopes that Ryou would still be motivated to seek rewarding friendships out in his own world, and not simply hide away in the shop, Watanuki established himself as more of an authority figure than a casual friend. He laid down rules regarding schoolwork (which was not to be done at the shop), and informing his parents of his visits, and that if Ryou stayed for a meal, he would be expected to clean up after.

Which is why now, glancing across the room at the table where they've been working at that five-thousand-piece puzzle this month, he says, "You can work on it after you clean up. But I have to finish some mending."

"Cool," grins Ryou, taking Watanuki's rules and reminders with the same unruffled equanimity as always. "I was thinking about it yesterday, I bet I can get that part with the vase together."

"Don't do the fruit bowl," says Watanuki, setting down his chopsticks and scooting over to grab his mending. "It's bothered me for two weeks, and I'm going to get it."

Ryou laughs, and then hurries to drink off the last of the broth in his bowl. "Fine, it's all yours."

 

**

 

"My sister hates me. She hasn't said a word to me in a week."

Watanuki stands up from the lantana he's been tying back, and stretches out the ache in his spine, taking in the duffel Ryou has over his shoulder and his utterly morose expression. "I could be wrong, but I don't think running away from home is the answer."

"Well staying there isn't the answer, either. She threw a vase at my head this morning. Mom's gonna be pissed when she gets back."

Besides his duffel, Ryou is carrying slew of grocery bags in each hand, and it takes no stretch of imagination to deduce his plan from that. Watanuki sighs. "You can't move in here."

"Could I sleep on your floor? Just for a few days. Til Mom and Dad get back?"  
"You haven't called them about this," Watanuki guesses.  
"No way. If I call them, they'll just come home early and be pissed at both of us."

Watanuki looks at the lantana, looks at the abundance of grocery bags, and is dismayed to realize his first instinct is to not waste all that food. "Kitchen," he sighs again, heavily, and gestures to Ryou to lead the way.

**

"A week is a long time to be angry," Watanuki remarks, as he's sorting through the groceries; fresh ingredients for a little bit of everything, it looks like.

"It totally wasn't my fault. But she won't even listen. And Kiyoshi says he's not taking sides, so he won't listen either, even though _his_ friend started the whole thing. Jerk."

Watanuki puts the cabbage in the crisper, rescues the cellophane noodles from Ryou's distracted hands before he crushes them, and then detours to the refrigerated wine rack for the bottle of umeshu he'd promised himself after gardening. If he's going to listen to an outpouring of high school sibling drama, he's at least going to have a good drink while doing it.

"So let me guess," he says, pulling out a clean glass from the cupboard. "Shiori-san likes Kiyoshi-san's friend?"

"She's been crazy about him for like, two years. Even though he's an idiot. Even after he turned her down, she still had a thing for him."

"Hm." Watanuki fills his glass, and savors the first chilly sip. This batch has turned out strong, but last years' plums had been first-rate. "And so somehow, you managed to interfere?"

It's the wrong thing to say. Ryou snaps out a huff of pure frustration, glaring down at his hands gripped to fists on the counter.  
" _No_ , I didn't even want him to ask me out. He just did, at Kiyoshi's party last week. And I told him no, 'cos I--I like somebody else. Besides, he's not a good person, but I didn't say that. Anyway I thought he'd go away, but he didn't, he keeps trying to call me, and then Shiori found out and she thinks I tried to, I dunno, steal this idiot she likes. It's so completely _stupid_ , I just--."

All Watanuki can do is stare, as Ryou clenches his jaw, visibly struggling to get himself under control. He breathes, drops his shoulders and closes his eyes a moment. Breathes some more, slow meditated breaths.

Then, in a deliberately quieter tone, "I figured if. If I just disappeared for a few days. That guy would give it up, and Shiori would get a clue and stop hating me. So." He turns, opens his eyes on Watanuki. "I'm not asking you to fix anything. You don't have to do anything at all. I'll do chores, whatever. Just, if I could stay here."

The hurt and anger in Ryou's eyes is no easier to look at than his frank penetrating stares; after a moment, Watanuki has to look back down at his wine glass. And then, following some deep, serious deliberation, he opens up the cupboard again, for another glass.

"Does someone in your house know you're here, at least?"  
"I told Kiyoshi. But he seemed pretty busy not listening to a damn thing."

Not once, not even for an instant in the ten years he's known Ryou, has he forgotten Haruka's expression and her solemn, binding words. _I trust you, with him._ And to this day he would never, even upon pain of death betray that trust. But as he had predicted then, and as he has been careful to remind her since, there would come times when Ryou would strike out on his own path, make his own decisions, independent of her preferences for him.

And it seems this will be one of those times. Because while he knows he should urge Ryou to inform his parents about what's happened, he knows the chances of Ryou actually interrupting his parents' first vacation together in years with this fiasco, are vanishingly small. Haruka and her husband will find out all that has transpired after the fact, and they will find out that Ryou took refuge at the shop without informing them. Watanuki can only hope that they will be understanding, given the circumstances.

"As I'm sure you well know," he tells Ryou, pouring the second glass of chilled plum wine, "the legal drinking age in Japan is twenty. And I am sure that you, as a law-abiding young high school student, would never imbibe alcohol, except in a legally permitted situation, with your parents' consent."

He slides the glass down the counter to Ryou, who has--as he'd intended--briefly set aside his anguished expression, for a tentative curiosity. "As you also know, this shop is not in Japan, and while I am bound by several laws, the legal drinking age of that country is not one of them. So there, you look like you could use a drink."

Watanuki leaves him to puzzle this over, and returns to sorting the groceries, setting aside a few likely-looking snack items.

"Am I gonna have to cook dinner, for this?" Ryou asks, looking dubiously at the glass.  
"No, you're going to clean the kitchen after dinner, and before that you're going to get the spare futon from the linen closet and air it out. Tomorrow you're going to help with laundry, and cleaning the shop, and pulling weeds in the flowerbeds."

Watanuki's hands are busy, but from the corner of his eye, he sees the tiniest ghost of a grateful smile creeping in at the corner of Ryou's own eye. "And day after tomorrow?" he asks, taking up the glass.

"Don't get ahead of yourself. You'll be plenty busy tomorrow."

 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recipe for [Satoimo-no-nimono](http://tanutech.com/japan/Nimono.html).


	11. Chapter 11

11.

 

Contrary to expectation, Ryou is not the impervious, seemingly bottomless drinker that Shizuka had been. His first glass of wine goes down slowly, and as Watanuki had hoped, it mellows him out. Enough so that when they take their dinner out to the back, to enjoy the summer evening, Ryou is able to relax and prop back against the porch post, seemingly content to listen to the crickets' song, while nibbling at the food on his plate and sipping at his second drink.

He appears content enough, that Watanuki thinks it might be safe to ask the question that's tickled at the back of his mind, since they were in the kitchen.

"You said you'd turned down Kiyoshi's friend, because you like someone else."  
Ryou sighs, and blinks slowly. "Yep. They don't know it, though."

Which is potentially another interesting topic, though Watanuki decides to set that aside for now. "You didn't turn him down because he's...." He is trying to think how to phrase it delicately, but he's at least four drinks ahead of Ryou, and not quite at his sharpest.

"Because he's not a girl?" Ryou provides, looking sidelong at him, and it might be a casual look, except that he doesn't look away, doesn't move at all. He's waiting to see Watanuki's reaction. "Yeah. Shiori always knew. Kiyoshi always ignored it. Dunno how his stupid friend knew."

"And your parents?" Watanuki asks, before it occurs to him that as frankly as they've always talked, all these years, and as much as Ryou has shared openly with him, he's never once so much as hinted about this. "I'm sorry, it's really none of my business."

"No. I mean it's cool." Ryou still hasn't moved, but he's watching Watanuki with both eyes, now. "I'm pretty sure my folks know. It's just. Nobody wants to talk about it. Because....the temple. Somebody's gotta take it over. And I don't think my brother and sister are that interested."

"Oh." For no reason he can explain, Watanuki's spirits drop. "The family line." Inheriting the Doumeki temple means carrying on that line. Which means marriage, and children. And of course Ryou would be the obvious choice, to inherit.

"I think. My folks think, I'm just sixteen. I 'm too young to decide stuff. I'll grow out of it maybe, whatever. So they don't ask, about who I like. And everytime I think I might just tell them, I remember that ring. The one Mom used to have to wear all the time. She did that for our family. Sometimes I can see it in her, y'know? This really big part of her life, that she gave up. That's one reason I'm not gonna bug her with this stupid thing, now. She and Dad deserve their vacation."

He looks back out to the darkened lawn, the distant fence, and the deep violet night sky above. "Y'know it's weird. We're in the middle of the city, but I can always see the stars better from here, than anywhere else."

"We're not really in the city," Watanuki reminds him quietly. He understands, just as Ryou must have known for some time, that there is nothing to be done for this problem. Not that Watanuki lacks the power to intervene in some way, but Ryou clearly isn't interested in asking for an intervention. And truly this is one of those times when, just as Yuuko had demonstrated, the best help he can give is by doing nothing. Intervention, some kind of wish, it might change the situation, but in the long term it wouldn't be for the better, and wouldn't be worth the cost. Ryou's predicament is one of those stones, rolling downhill, and for now all he can do is wait to see where it comes to rest.

But however he's managed it, Ryou has evidently found some peace in the matter. He seems reconciled to the current impasse, to a degree that belies his age. And the proof of this comes when he turns back toward Watanuki, with a small, patient, perhaps slightly tipsy smile.

"I get it now. Why my grandfathers liked to stay here, with you. In those dreams I had, I....found out they were very happy, here. And now we're here, and I know what it's like. I know why."

Watanuki tilts his head, trying to gauge how much of this is the umeshu talking. The stuff is potent after all, even by his standards. Then he looks down at the porch between them, the grain of the wooden boards he knows like the skin of his own arm by now. He looks out across the yard, the bushy shadows of the barberry hedge, the straight planks of the fence, the apparently immortal gingko tree shading the side yard.

And he tries to remember, to see it all through the eyes he'd once had, almost a century ago. When this place was more than the boundaries of his entire world, when it was his workplace, his haven from all the uncertainty and chaos past that fence. He tries to see it as Haruka and Shizuka must have; a peaceful, comfortable place to relax and pass an evening.

But somehow that connection, that outsider's view of this place, remains just beyond his grasp.

"I'm glad," is all he can say. "If you feel better, here. I'm glad." Because he wouldn't begrudge anyone so fundamentally good as Ryou, for the sanctuary he's found here tonight. Although he can't help but be curious, feeling surely Ryou will need more than just this place to turn to in the future. And it could only help, if he had someone out in the world, to stand by him....

"That person. The one you mentioned liking. Have you thought about telling them?"  
Ryou looks down into his half-full glass with a wry, too-wise twist to his smile. "I've thought about it a lot. But they wouldn't go for it. They don't see me the same way."

"Are you sure?" Watanuki asks. "You know, there's a lot of things you won't find out about people, unless you ask."

This time when Ryou tips his wine up, it's not for a small sip, but two long swallows that nearly drain the glass. He winces a bit and shakes his head, and then subsides back against the post. "Did you ever confess to anybody, before you lived here?"

"Me?" Watanuki blinks.  
"There was a girl you liked. Kunogi Himawari. I dreamed about hanging out with you and her, in that park by school. I've been to those spots, where you guys used to have lunch with Grandfather Shizuka-san."

"I didn't...." Watanuki lifts his own glass for a drink, sees it's empty, and leans over to pour them each a refill.

"You didn't confess," Ryou concludes, watching him calmly. "You liked her, but you didn't say anything."

"That was a very different situation," says Watanuki, between sips. "Himawari-chan was a dear, wonderful person. But she had a curse, that hurt anyone she got close to. I was hurt a few times. I almost died once. So I never could confess. Given her problem, it would've been cruel to her. But I also never, never stopped being her friend. I'm sorry, could you excuse me for a minute?"

He wants Yuuko's kiseru suddenly, he thinks he'll run to his room, have just one puff, and maybe feel less anxious. Drinking always makes him want a smoke, and talking about his lost former life only exacerbates the craving.

"I don't mind if you smoke around me," Ryou says knowingly, still with that peculiar calm. "I've brought your tobacco over from Mom before, y'know."

Watanuki hasn't the slightest cause to feel embarrassed, but his face clearly doesn't get the memo; he feels his cheeks heating, like he's been caught at something. "I should set a better example for you."

At this, Ryou laughs. "Nah. You should just be yourself. I mean good grief, you're giving me booze because I've had the crappiest week ever. Thanks for that, by the way. But seriously, even if you smoke in front of me, it's not gonna turn me into a delinquent."

Seeing his point, Watanuki has to chuckle, himself. "True. In that case, I'll be right back."

Returning to the porch with his smoking kit, he sees that Ryou is still gazing off peacefully into nothing in particular, long legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. Seeing the ribbed hem of his socks under his trouser hem, Watanuki notes that he's still growing apace. He's of a height with Watanuki now, and in another few years, he'll be even taller.

His resemblance to Shizuka and Haruka now is uncanny. When he's quiet and serious, Watanuki could almost swear he's looking at Shizuka, to the point that he just about has to bite his tongue, to keep from making some untoward sharp comment (apparently some habits died very, very hard). But then Ryou smiles, or laughs, and the bottom of Watanuki's heart drops out, because his laugh is Haruka through and through.

Only not quite. Watanuki doesn't recall Haruka having the same dry, sharp sense of humor peeking out; maybe he'd outgrown it by the time Watanuki knew him, who knows. But where Haruka had been often mischievous, Ryou is clever and wry. And where Shizuka had mostly brooded, even in a good mood, Ryou's seriousness is a deep, inward-searching process; taking in all that he hears and learns and sees, and laying it out for examination, piece by piece on the solemn, sacred altar of his heart.

As he fills his pipe, lights, and breathes fragrant smoke into the soft night air, Watanuki's thoughts are drawn again, to the matter of this person whom Ryou has set that sure, strong heart of his on. Because Ryou, he is absolutely certain, would never fall for a mere passing crush. If there is someone he has aspirations toward, it is a matter of consequence. And this person, regardless of whether they ever learn of his affections, they will have a lasting impact on his life.

If this were strictly an issue of Ryou's health or safety, Watanuki could probably justify a divination session, to look in and learn about this person. But in the issue of Ryou's heart, it would be intrusive and utterly disrespectful, to go poking around behind the young man's back to learn what manner of person he was associating with. It would be a betrayal of trust, and Watanuki won't do that to him. In a matter such as this, Watanuki needs to ask up front, face-to-face, and accept that Ryou may or may not want to share with him.

He smokes, thinking it through, aware of Ryou stealing a glance at him, still half-smiling about Watanuki's earlier conscientious fretting. It's a funny, fond little smile, and Watanuki has to keep it far in the corner of his vision, so it won't distract him.

But then he hesitates just a beat too long; it's Ryou who breaks the quiet first. Looking down, setting his wine glass on the engawa. "Can I ask a question? It's personal."

Watanuki looks over, raising an eyebrow. There are no coincidences.   
"You can ask."  
"But you might not answer," Ryou shrugs. "Fair enough. I just wondered, if you ever kissed anybody."

Looking at their respective wine glasses, Watanuki tries to decide whether they've drank enough for this conversation, whether this calls for more wine, or whether he'd be better off sobering up a bit.   
"That's a troublesome question." Although truly, not one bit more personal than what Ryou has shared with him already, or the further questions he has in mind.

"Does that mean you don't wanna answer, or that the answer costs something?"

Watanuki pauses, just long enough to make sure he's reading the situation objectively. "I will answer you. But it's not for others to know. And I'd like to know something, in return."

"Like I'd tell anybody. And I haven't. Kissed anyone, I mean."  
"I wasn't going to ask that." Watanuki tips him a stern eye over his glasses, just to remind him who sets the prices around here. "I have _been_ kissed, three times. Once by a duck puppet, but that doesn't count and don't you dare laugh."

"Wouldn't think of it." Ryou presses his lips between his teeth, and Watanuki can just see the amusement he's fighting back, bubbling behind his eyes.  
"I was teased when I worked here for Yuuko-san. They were unmerciful. Mokona kissed me, and Mugetsu kissed me."  
"Mugetsu's really affectionate," Ryou observes, grinning now. "Are you sure that counts?"

"Everyone acted like it did," mutters Watanuki, momentarily forgetting he's supposed to be the wise experienced Shopkeeper, and scowling at the memory of the indignity, Yuuko's outrageous laughter and the girls' chorused cheers over it.

But then he remembers that they are gone, and he is still here, and his ire dissolves completely, leaving him adrift. Definitely too much wine for this conversation, then. Right, better set that memory aside, before he gets maudlin.

"The third kiss," he sighs. "Was Jorougumo. After I took over here."

Ryou's smile falls entirely away, and he stiffens. "Why would she do that?" His look is narrowed, and uncommonly hard, and all Watanuki can figure is that he's remembering how Watanuki lost his eye to Jorougumo. Both from Watanuki's cautionary story, and from having observed much of the episode in his dreams, a few years later.

"You could say she has....personal boundary issues," Watanuki explains, more uncomfortable at Ryou's angry reaction, than he'd been at the time the spider matron had stolen that kiss. Which was itself plenty uncomfortable. "And she likes to push people's buttons. I don't bother holding it against her, it's just her nature," he shrugs. "Might as well hold a grudge against the sky for being rainy."

"It's still not cool."  
"No, I suppose it wasn't. But she didn't get away with it for free. I charged her with taking responsibility for someone, after that. And I'd like to think it's improved her manners, since."

"Hm. Ever since you told me about your eye, I was always nice to spiders. I never let anybody squash them in the house. And I never messed up their webs."

"I'm sure they appreciate the consideration. I wouldn't change that, if I were you." Seeing that Ryou is still obviously disgruntled, he adds, "It was a very long time ago. I'm sure she wouldn't try the same thing now."

"Hm," Ryou repeats, and the hardness in eyes slowly relents.  
"So that's it. You never kissed an actual person?"

"I was a bit too busy when I was your age, for that sort of thing," Watanuki half-jokes. "And then I lived here, and. Well," gesturing about the empty yard. "Not a lot of opportunity, as you can see."

Ryou looks to him sharply, searching for some truth past Watanuki's attempt at humor, but before Watanuki can feel _too_ uncomfortably exposed, he looks away again.

"Well. I guess it's your turn, now. To ask."

Of course, as is usual with Ryou, Watanuki now finds he has more questions than he'd initially accounted for. Most people, he has found, are not terribly difficult to read. He can ask them one question, and simply from their mannerisms, their bearing, before they even voice an answer, he gains a wealth of knowledge.

But Ryou is more opaque, and unexpectedly more complex than most people. Watanuki will ask one question, and find he has ten more on his tongue by the time Ryou is done answering. He used to find it utterly confounding, particularly when Ryou was younger, before familiarity and a few hundred board games, card games, and thousands of puzzle pieces wore away their respectful formal boundaries with each other.

When Watanuki had finally gotten around to learning about the bamboo plant Ryou had gifted him with, for example, it had actually started as a discussion about Ryou's birthday, and how he'd been born during Tanabata. Haruka had taught him early on about the old Tanabata tradition of writing wishes, and hanging them in a bamboo tree, and ever since he'd begun calligraphy lessons, Ryou made a point of that observance on his birthday.

Although he didn't write wishes, he was careful to point out. Because knowing Watanuki, he knew that wishes weren't something to ever be taken lightly. What he wrote instead, he'd explained, were promises to himself. Resolutions. Things he intended to accomplish.

Eventually, in the course of that circuitous interview, Watanuki was able to ask why Ryou had chosen to give him that bamboo plant. And Ryou answered, because of his dream. The one he'd first called Watanuki about, when he'd overheard Watanuki's promise to grant Yuuko-san's wish. Now Watanuki lived in a wish shop, but he didn't have a wish tree. And Ryou had felt strongly that he should have one.

But Watanuki had known that wasn't all there was to it. The boy had been unaware of Watanuki's own dream that night, Watanuki was convinced of that much from their conversation. But he was equally certain that there was something more to that choice of gift, hidden deeper than he could see, deeper than even Ryou himself was conscious of.

And now, with Ryou waiting to hear his question, Watanuki has a strong feeling that there will be that mysterious, tantalizing _more_ again, buried far beneath whatever answer Ryou gives him.

But still, he will ask. "You said earlier, that the person you care for doesn't see you the same way. It makes me wonder, why you would like them so much, then."

"Doesn't make sense, does it." Ryou is still looking off, but his entire countenance softens. "I always thought people who did that were just wasting their time. But. He's perfect. It doesn't even matter, that we couldn't be together. I can't see the point in caring about anybody else, as long as he exists."

"I realize you won't thank me for telling you this," Watanuki cautions. "But Ryou-san, no one is perfect. Everyone has flaws."

"I didn't say he was flawless," Ryou answers, in a manner that makes Watanuki feel he's being humored. "He's _good_ , and I trust him, and when I get to be around him....I'm happy. Really happy." Shaking his head, smiling ruefully to himself as he adds, "Even if he's really dense about some things."

"Is he someone you know from school?"  
"Nope. I've known him awhile, though. He was my friend for....awhile. And then I. It's like I just woke up one day, and I knew." Here Ryou's softness becomes uncertain, vulnerable, and Watanuki has more questions than he can possibly ask, but he knows that what Ryou needs most is just for someone to listen right now.

"I don't wanna say anything to him, because what if it screws things up? What if he finds out how I feel, and doesn't like it? Then it would be too weird for him if I was around, and I wouldn't have him for a friend anymore. And I really, really don't want to lose that."

"But if he's truly your friend, and you trust him," Watanuki offers. "Wouldn't it be better to tell the truth?"

"Only in theory," says Ryou, with the promptness of someone who'd given the issue a great deal of thought. "The thing is, people get scared sometimes, right? Especially when they're put in a tight spot. So if I confessed, and it scared him, and I know it could happen because Kiyoshi's dumb friend scared the hell out of me. Then. Well let's say down the road, he needed me for something. I wouldn't be able to help him, if I'd already scared him."

"You do realize trust needs to go both ways, right?" asks Watanuki, and now Ryou actually looks at him. Blinking. "You said you trust this person, but you don't sound confident about whether they trust you. Perhaps before you decide how you'll treat your connection with them, you should find that out."

"I didn't think about that." In the midst of filing this away for consideration, Ryou looks troubled. "Hey. I said I wasn't gonna bother for you for help tonight. But you're helping me anyway."

"Oh, I intend to get my worth for it tomorrow," Watanuki says, with the cool placidity he'd learned from Yuuko, and perfected in regard to Mokona's drinking rations. "You'll be glad to go back home, once I'm done working you."

But of course his Shopkeeper manner has never intimidated Ryou, and the young man isn't the least bit fazed now. "You're a really good friend, you know that?" he tells Watanuki, earnest and focused on him. "I've always been thankful, that I got to know you. And someday, if you ever need my help. I dunno what for, but if you did, I'd be there. I'd do everything I could."

Watanuki is aware that even after all this time, he is not so impervious as he likes to appear. As he often needs to appear, in front of customers, and individuals like Jorougumo. But it's been a long time since he's been made so viscerally aware of his human vulnerabilities. He knows he needs to keep them, he knows they are necessary, they are part of what is _keeping_ him human.

But in moments like this, moments when he feels the strings of his heart tangled in Ryou's hands, held there with just this look, this open, sincere look of absolute promise, Watanuki could almost panic, knowing how breakable he still is. His intuition is urging him to pull back, establish some safe distance between them, get his heart-strings safely back into his own hands, thank you very much. Because Ryou doesn't know how perilous this is, how deeply a person can be wounded when they care too much. He doesn't know how much loss can hurt, and go on hurting for years, decades, generations, a century.

Watanuki knows. He's lived it. And he will live it again. When Haruka-chan leaves this world. When Ryou himself moves on (and oh, Watanuki doesn't want that to be for a long, long time). And he knows that even if he can tell himself he harbors no regrets, even if he's told them all he wanted them to hear, even if he's done all in his power to honor their friendship to the fullest, there will be days and endless tormented nights when all his best intentions won't make the slightest difference to his loss.

What is almost worse, however, is that in moments like this, there comes a point when he has to ignore the future, and all that he knows is inevitable. Because this, right now, is Ryou's life in progress. This moment, as quiet and brief as it may be, is setting his future course. And if Watanuki dismisses it in fear of a far more distant eventuality, he will be robbing Ryou of this Now, the lessons and memories Ryou will take from here, into the rest of his life.

So with this in mind, he scoots down the engawa, pushing aside their drink tray and glasses, and the empty bowls from dinner. He moves so that he can kneel in front of Ryou, meet him eye-to-eye, giving him his full, complete attention.

"I want you to know that I'm thankful too. You're a remarkable person, Ryou-san. And I have been very happy, since I've known you, that you choose to come here, and be a part of my life. I also think that the person you care for, whether it's the one you've told me about, or someone else later, on the day you tell them what they mean to you, they will be the luckiest person in the world. This isn't fortunetelling, this is just what I believe."

Unlike his earlier cool attitude, this gets straight through to Ryou. It punctures him deep, Watanuki can see it in his initial stricken look, before he drops his chin to his chest, overcome.

"...Watanuki-san," is all he says, but a deaf person wouldn't miss the tidal wave of feeling behind it.

"You're tired," Watanuki observes kindly. "You've had a tough week. Let's get all these things back to the kitchen, so you can rest."

He's just pushing up to stand, when Ryou reaches out and catches the cuff of his sleeve between his fingers. "Wait. Just a second." Apparently he's not yet ready to meet Watanuki's eyes again, because when he speaks, he's staring hard at the hemmed cloth pinched under his thumb.

"I think. The reason I'm worried about telling that person. Is that it's not time yet. When the time's right, then I won't be afraid about it. I'll be able to say what I feel. I just hope that it makes him happy. Because that's really what I want most, for him to be happy."

For a second, Watanuki lays his hand on Ryou's. First to discreetly retrieve his shirt cuff, and then to give Ryou's warm hand a brief, reassuring squeeze. "You've always been clever about these sorts of things. When you feel the time is right, then the chances are very good that it will be. But right now, it's time to clean the kitchen. So up you go."

Ryou bites his lip, sitting motionless for a moment. Long enough that Watanuki almost asks whether he feels all right. But then he seems to draw on a certain bedrock-deep Doumeki endurance, and pulls himself together.

He nods, and chuckles softly. "Gotta start earning my keep, huh. Yeah, I gotcha."

 

*****


	12. Chapter 12

12.

 

Summer blazes high and burns out like a shooting star, cascading down in a fall of red and yellow leaves, spirited away by crisp winds. The nights lengthen, the snow falls and blankets the world in smooth, snug winter white, which melts to slush and soaks into the soggy earth, as the earth tilts again toward the sun.

March comes in on a fierce bluster of rain and shredded cloud, and Watanuki is making scones with cranberries again, casting thoughtful looks into the crannies of the refrigerator, with bento-making on his mind.

Probably because he knows Haruka is making bento, for Ryou to take to his kyudo tournament tomorrow, the last match of the year. And he of course remembers, with a peculiar mixture of pride and the nostalgia which sometimes felt indistinguishable from severe annoyance, how he used to make _spectacular_ bento for kyudo tournaments. The mothers who'd regularly attended Shizuka's matches would gather around, some delighted, some openly envious at the bento Watanuki used to turn out.

He's well aware that he could use someone like Yuuko or even Mokona, to laugh at him over this. Because while he couldn't think of usurping Haruka's privilege of preparing her youngest son's bento, for this much-anticipated sporting event, he knows he could turn out a commemorative work of art for the occasion. Which he feels strongly that it deserves.

Maybe he could call her, and suggest a recipe. Or contribute just one dish, it wouldn't take him any time at all. In return, she could bring him a photograph of the family together at the tournament grounds....

By midday, he's near to wringing his hands, and has to take himself out back to rake up some of the rain-sodden mess in the yard, to keep from picking up the phone. It's silly, he shouldn't intrude, the family was busy enough at this time of year.

It isn't until late afternoon, when Watanuki is making tea, pacing past the liquor cupboard, detouring by the phone on his way back around to the tea kettle, that he realizes his distraction is something else. It's an anxiety he can't put a name to, nudging at him, making him need to _do_ something.

He forgets about the bento, because it's not about that, and takes his tea around the shop since sitting still is evidently not an option for him. And the shop, he finds, is exceedingly quiet. It's got that too-still, anticipatory air again, as though the very atmosphere of the place is deliberately subduing itself, so that when something does happen, he can't possibly miss it.

The wards are all in order, when he checks. The storeroom offers no clues at all. The windows, doors, lights and appliances are fine. By which he concludes that whatever is bothering him, it isn't in here. Not yet, anyhow.

Night falls, and nothing happens. It doesn't happen to such a notable extent that Watanuki can't work on his mending, or knitting, and knows that trying to cook right now would only be a waste of food. He's too much on edge for anything requiring patience or focus. A few drinks might settle him down, but like it or not, he feels sure that he needs his wits sharp. This anxious edge is settled in him for a reason, and when something finally does happen, he would rather have that edge, than not.

For such an uneventful night, it turns out to be quite exhaustively long.

**

When midday comes around again, he's a ragged mess. He'd had tea and burnt scones for breakfast, tea for lunch, and in between he's been collecting things, the way people in the coastal towns collect emergency supplies when the typhoon warnings are broadcast. Only instead of flashlight batteries, clean water, and canned food, he's got incense, candles, protective charms, and spare bedding airing out on the laundry line.

Though that last bit may not be doing much good, since unlike yesterday's damp gusty weather, today is solid dark gray, cold, and absolutely still outside. That feeling of the shop holding its breath has taken hold of the space outdoors, to the point that Watanuki wants to yell at the top of his lungs; he wants _just one thing_ to set him off so he can rant and wave his arms, and banish this terrible heavy stillness with a good healthy venting of righteous outrage.

But there isn't anything that's not cooperating with him, and it's _agonizing_ , and he misses Shizuka more in this moment than he has since he quit counting his birthdays. Shizuka had always known when Watanuki needed to rail and rave the most, and he'd always obliged him with a reason to. In retrospect, it was a fairly brave, selfless act, taking all Watanuki's wrath upon himself, before Watanuki exploded into shrapnel where he stood (though Watanuki remains convinced that due to some inexplicable perversity of character, Shizuka privately enjoyed bearing the brunt of it).

Something is going to happen, and there's nothing he can do, so he does everything else he can think of. He sets out utensils for a tea service, draws and heats a fresh bath, lays out spare yukata and towels. He permits himself one shot of brandy, just to steady his nerves enough to cook, and turns his refrigerator and pantry wrong-side out, making somen, tebasaki, harumaki, inarizushi, torisoboro, and a half-dozen other onigiri fillings.

Bento food, picnic food is what he's making. Enough for a small army of people, though he's not cooking for a gathering, he's staving off the paralysis of approaching calamity. He's just stacking the last covered dish into a refrigerator already full of them, trying desperately to think what now, what more could he cook, what else could he do....

And then he hears it. Someone pounding up the sidewalk from the front, up onto the porch, and he runs for the door, yanking at his apron strings in back, but that's as far as he gets before he nearly collides into Ryou, bursting through the entry foyer.

"Watanuki! I had to tell you--." He's heaving to catch his breath, still in his kyudo-gi from the match, hair damp with sweat at his temples.

"What's happened? What's wrong?" Watanuki gets out, but then amidst his clenching fear he realizes that Ryou is smiling. A fierce, exultant smile, and against the dim warning stillness all around he is positively _incandescent_ , his whole shape, his presence, everything about him.

"Listen, I only got a second, I ran off after the ceremony and there's this party...." He's propping his wrapped yumi against the low partition at the entry step, in his other hand is a shining gold medal with a ribbon, and briefly he grips it, before gripping Watanuki in place with eyes blazing hot.

"I had this dream last night, and I finally got it, when I was shooting today, it all made sense. What Sensei always told us, we don't aim for the target, we aim for _ourselves_ , who we really are, and I _got it_ today."

"Erm. That's....excellent. I'm proud of you, but." Watanuki is too thrown, too perplexed to even pick a question to ask, and it doesn't help that Ryou is standing here radiating power and vitality, like some titanic hero of legend, filling every bit of tangible space in this room and Watanuki's awareness.

And then Ryou strides up to him, hakama billowing about his ankles, still looking him boldly in the eye, and takes hold of Watanuki's hand.

"I'm gonna come back here, and tell you everything, okay? I can't right now, I ran the whole way here. But I want you to hang onto this--." Pressing his gold medal into Watanuki's palm, closing Watanuki's fingers around it, because Watanuki is too stunned at the moment to stop him.

His hands are so warm, is all Watanuki can think. And then those warm hands are on his shoulders, and Ryou's energy, some previously untapped force that Watanuki has never once sensed before, is crackling too close all around him.

"I'm gonna come back for it, soon as I can, I promise. And I'm gonna tell you, then."

And this is the moment, Watanuki will understand later. This is the pivotal crux of all that happens after, when he could have said, _Wait. Don't go._ He will know, that having had it all to do over again, that's what he should have said, and never mind the hellacious turbulence that would ensue.

In hindsight, he will see it all laid out, see the pattern, the meanings he had failed to spot. He will know that what's blinding him in this most important moment is apprehension, such a small, incredibly insignificant apprehension, given what he will have to compare it to after.

But hindsight is every bit as cruel as fate. And by then, all they'll be able to do, is make the most of what they have left to go on with.

He has only this moment to alter the course of things to come, and then it's fled, with Ryou blinding him with a smile, turning to grab his yumi and sprinting off out the door, and by the time Watanuki can force his legs to give chase, the front walk is empty, and Ryou is gone.

The silence of the day, after that one stupendous interruption, comes down even heavier than before. Watanuki is several minutes shaking off the minor explosion of Ryou's visit, before he's able to register the premonition of absolute doom bearing down on him.

He wants to go for the phone, but he's too rattled to know who exactly to call, or what to say, so he goes for his pipe instead, left in his room. He kneels and takes out the kiseru, hands trembling, Ryou's medal gleaming dully in his lap, nothing near so brilliant as Ryou's eyes still haunting him. He's making a mess with the tobacco, filling the bowl, and--.

 _**CRACK!!!** _

Tobacco scattering across the floor when his body jolts, his head jerks up to the nearby shelf, that straw-wrapped pot he's kept there for years, split in two jagged pieces, still rocking gently from the force.

At that one glance, he knows.

Too late for prevention, but maybe not too late to save, and his bare heels pound the floorboards down the hall to the telephone.

He dials the temple, and listens to the ringing, ringing, ringing, and then joggles the cradle hard to disconnect, dialing again, Ryou's mobile.

Out of service. His shaking hand knocks the phone off the table, and he dives down after it, righting it on the floor, dialing now on his knees, Haruka's mobile number, and god of all times for _no one he bloody knows_ to be available.

With a sob, he slams down the receiver, thinking, he has to think, there's something he can do, there has to be, all his power is for nothing if he can't help Ryou. What can he do, what would Yuuko do?

When it hits him, he starts upright. Yuuko had done this before. She'd done it for him. She'd summoned Shizuka to the shop, that first time. With a messenger. Of course.

He closes his eyes, holds his finger out for a perch, forcing himself to be steady for this, and reaches, with all his will, all his heart, for that deep indwelling place where his power waits to be tapped.

"Find Ryou's family, whoever you see first." Opening his eyes on the bright crested bird, gripping his finger with its tiny feet, blinking shiny eyes at his instructions.

"You'll know where he is, once you're out there." As Ame-Warashi had said just a few years ago, Ryou was impossible to miss. And when he'd run off from the shop not ten minutes ago, he'd been blazing like a lighthouse.

"If they can bring him here, I'll do all in my power," he instructs the bird. "Make sure they know that."

He rushes to the front door and opens it, sending his messenger off into the darkening sky. "Please, please hurry."

**

There's nothing to do but wait. Not even knowing, he'd already done all he could to prepare for events to come. The shop is ready, the food is ready, the bath and bedding for whomever may need it. The only thing not ready, is Watanuki himself. Because no matter how he will look, when they come to him, no matter what he will know to say or do when the moment is at hand, no one can ever be ready for circumstances like this.

The storeroom won't help him in this. The kitchen won't help. He can't go near his bedroom and look at that broken pot, not right now. This waiting, and not knowing, it's too much to bear, and he finds himself at the door to Yuuko's old bedroom, where Maru, Mokona, and Moro still sleep.

He can't barge in and disturb them, it still isn't time. He can only sit on the floor, knees drawn up, sagging against the door frame.

"What do I do now? What did Yuuko-san do, when she couldn't do anything?" His voice hardly echoing in the taut stillness.

Going by the calendars he scarcely ever looks at anymore, he's something in the neighborhood of a hundred and seven years old. But obviously calendars are very stupid things, because truly he feels no older than ten, twelve at the most, a lost child with no adult to tell him what to do, how to bear this, how he's supposed to hold it together for the people depending on him.

**

He's out at the bamboo tree, when they arrive. Tying a message to one of its branches, for whatever good it might do. Not a wish, but a promise: Mamoru, just as Ryou had written on his first visit here.

"Ah, excuse us? We're sorry for intruding." It's a girl he's never met, pale and pinched with worry. She's accompanied by a young man, standing equally as grave at her side. "But we've come here, to see the owner of this place."

"Yes," Watanuki turns smoothly and nods. "Shiori-san, Kiyoshi-san, welcome to my shop."

"Mom and Dad are at the hospital right now, with....Ryou." Doumeki Kiyoshi must look like his father, Watanuki thinks distantly. Taller than his younger brother, but his eyes are dark, like his sister's, and much softer than the eyes Watanuki is accustomed to seeing among this family. "She said she'll come soon. But we got your....um. Message."

The pair watch, a little dazed, as Watanuki's bird flutters across the yard to him, to land again on his outstretched finger. "Well. That's good," Watanuki supposes aloud. Knowing they did not come here just because he sent a message. They have a wish for him to grant, or else they would not be seeing him here now.

He does not smile for them; this is not an occasion for pleasantries. "Please, come inside. I've been waiting."

**

Ryou had been attacked, they tell him. Halfway across the park, on the way to his team's victory party. A passerby had found him unconscious and severely injured, and called an ambulance and the police. One of the officers on the call had recognized Ryou from the temple, and contacted his parents. And shortly thereafter, Watanuki's bird had found Shiori and Kiyoshi at home.

Now Ryou is in Intensive Care, unresponsive and showing worrisome symptoms of head trauma, while his parents wait to hear the prognosis.

"And you are here, because...." Watanuki trails off, looking to each of them in turn. Shiori holds his gaze, while Kiyoshi looks down at the floor where he kneels, looking blindsided, badly shaken, and shamed.

"Because this is our fault," Shiori tells him. The way she's twisting her fingers in her lap must be painful, but she doesn't look away from him. "We know the person responsible."

"And Ryou's our brother," Kiyoshi fills in. "I, especially, should have protected him."

There was once a time when Watanuki had wondered, how Yuuko could have been sympathetic and helpful to some customers, and so terrifyingly stern with others. Back then, the people who came to her looked more or less the same to him. But then he'd unknowingly frightened his first customer, just telling her the truth he saw, and he began to understand.

Some of those people, he had learned, had to be tested first. Either to make them examine the sincerity of their wish, or to reveal what the hidden truth of their wish really was. And then there were others, like the pair he's looking at now, who _knew_ they were culpable in the problem they'd brought him.

Shiori and Kiyoshi are not like Ryou. He can read them easily, just looking at them. He knows, meeting Shiori's gaze, who was responsible for Ryou's attack. He knows, as they know, that with the right actions, months ago, they might have been able to prevent it.

"It was your friend," he tells Kiyoshi, and this wrests the young man's attention from the floor, immediately. First he stares at Watanuki like a cornered rabbit, _How in the world did you know?_ But to his credit, he pulls himself together and nods.

"He's not my friend anymore. Not since he started bugging Ryou. But yes, it was him."

Watanuki doesn't think he's ever been so grateful for the Shopkeeper's bearing, this role, this division between himself and what he does here. Because without it bolstering him, providing composure where he himself has none, he doesn't want to think what he might do or say to them.

Sliding his gaze over to Shiori, who sits white-faced, but steadfast in the face of the truth, he says, "And you told Ryou's secret. Because you were angry at the time. You spoke carelessly, and your words went and festered into another person's hatred. Those words you spoke became actions today."

"I hurt my brother," she answers, eyes bright with tears she's fighting back, fighting fiercely. "I should have been careful about what I said, but I wasn't. I knew that someone would hate him for....what he is. I knew when I told about him, but it was too late to take it back."

"And I didn't get involved," Kiyoshi puts in, with a glance at his sister. "I'm the oldest. I should've done something. But I just....hoped it would go away."

"You understand what I do here." Watanuki turns a long hard look on each of them.

"Watanuki-sama does things that other people can't. For a price," answers Kiyoshi. "We've never met you, but we know that."

"Then let me make it clear what I don't do. I do not grant absolution for people's mistakes. I cannot right what you have done wrong. I cannot offer you forgiveness, from those you have wronged. If that is what you're seeking here, then you're wasting your time."

"No. We know that," says Shiori. There is a core of strength in her, Watanuki sees, reminiscent of her mother. She has what Haruka had, back when Haruka was that age, and struggling over the cost of her wish. Steel in her spirit, like Shizuka at his most intransigent.

Although he can't believe that Shizuka would ever have betrayed another person in anger, as she has done. It is a serious transgression, one which he is sure fate will not overlook, when the accounts come due.

"Then what is your wish?" Watanuki asks, matching her steel with ice, testing her now because she will not be permitted to falter later on.

"Our brother is critically injured. The doctors don't know right now, if he'll wake up. If there's anything you can do about that, we will pay whatever you ask."

Terrible as it is, the fact that they are at least partly responsible, makes it far easier for Watanuki to contemplate the proper price. He may not yet know the extent of what has to be repaired, but he has firsthand experience with the costs of bringing someone back from life-threatening injury.

"I can tell you right now, that the price will be too much for just one person to bear. It's bound to be too much for even two of you. So if you are set on this course, neither of you can afford to back out. Is that understood?"

"We won't," says Kiyoshi. "We wouldn't deserve to live, if we did. So no matter what it is, we've already decided we'll pay."

"Mother told us also," Shiori puts in. "When we said we were coming here, she said to tell you, that she will pay too."

Watanuki nods his acknowledgment, though he knows Haruka will not be able to offer the same as her children. She has already carried a major debt to this shop, and though it was settled in full years ago, the unwritten laws governing wishes tend to discourage repeat customers from incurring high costs. He will find a way for her to contribute, but the majority of the cost will come from Shiori and Kiyoshi, and very likely a loan from Watanuki, himself.

Normally, he wouldn't be able to contribute. Back when he was in Ryou's place, Yuuko hadn't been able contribute to the price, for him. But if necessary, he suspects he can exploit a certain loophole, created in the distant past.

"I will need to know more about his condition, before I can know what I'm able to grant," he tells them. "And I'll need your mother's help, with that."

"I'll call her," offers Kiyoshi, digging his mobile out from his pocket. As Watanuki has already predicted, he frowns. "Oh. It's out of service."

"My mobile is the only one that works, in here," Watanuki says. "Come, you can use the phone in the hallway."

 

*****


	13. Chapter 13

13.

 

Haruka arrives to the shop soaking wet; out past the gate it's a heavy cloudburst, but within the shop's boundaries the weather remains still and solemn as a funeral gathering. Watanuki brings her a dry towel at the front, and with her at least, he can be solicitous.

"I have hot tea and food, if you'd like some," he offers, taking her dripping jacket to hang in the kitchen. "Would you like to get comfortable, in the back?"

She stares up at him, clutching the ends of the towel around her neck, and though outwardly she is composed enough, her eyes belong to someone struggling to tread water, to keep from drowning "My children...."

"Kiyoshi and Shiori are here waiting, they're fine. How is Ryou-san, can the doctors help him?"

Haruka presses her lips to a thin white line, and catches one breath, then another. "His skull fracture....it's causing swelling, on his brain. If it becomes worse, they'll have to operate. But they can only wait, right now. They wouldn't say anything about damage. Long term. But."

Deep down, under his mantle of Shopkeeper, under the responsibilities of friendship to Ryou's mother, Watanuki wants to weep, he wants something to scream at, he wants to tear a hole in time with his bare hands and crawl back to that moment, standing right here with Ryou--alive and so strong and _breathtaking_ \--when he could have stopped this.

But he doesn't have that power quite yet. The consequences could be apocalyptic. And Haruka is the only one in this room with any right to break over what's happened. It is Watanuki's duty, as her friend, to help keep her from that point. Right now it is the only thing he can do which won't cause worse harm.

"His father is staying with him?" he asks gently, and she nods. He's on the verge of steering her down the hall toward the back then, when just for a moment, she grabs at his sleeve.

"Wait. Before I see them. Kiyoshi said they were coming here, because it was their fault. But what does that mean? I don't understand, did they tell you?"

"They told me enough," Watanuki allows. "But I believe it best that you speak directly with them."

He brings her to the rear parlor, where Kiyoshi and Shiori are waiting, then excuses himself to the kitchen, to prepare hot tea for them all. He takes his time over the tray, to give them privacy, arranging some snacks and utensils, but then on his first pass back toward the parlor, he catches Haruka's tearful voice, "...how _could_ you, your own brother...," and decides to give them a few more minutes.

He's still in the kitchen, dithering over a bowl of salted snacks, versus a plate of shortbread cookies, when Kiyoshi clears his throat at the doorway. "Sorry. Watanuki-sama," he bows. "Sorry to trouble you. I was just looking for some tissues, for Mom."

"Of course." Watanuki fetches the tissue box, hands them to Kiyoshi along with the cookie plate, and takes up the tea tray again, to return to the parlor.

 

**

"When I was in high school," he begins telling them, "I suffered a serious fall, out the second-story window at school. Most of the window fell with me. It was Shizuka-san who brought me here. I was gravely hurt, I'm not sure I would have survived the ambulance trip to the hospital."

They are all seated on the floor, with the tea service on the low table between them. Watanuki on one side, Kiyoshi, Shiori, and Haruka on the other. Haruka has her hands folded around her teacup for warmth, staring down into it as she takes in every word. Kiyoshi is watching him, as is Shiori, and her hands are fisted on her lap.

"Because of my injuries, Yuuko-san said it would take three people, paying debts to this shop, to save me. Shizuka-san paid the amount of blood I had lost. My other closest friend paid a similar price. And unbeknownst to me, there was someone who had paid to the shop years before, knowing there was a time when I might be lost from this world."

It wasn't until after Himawari-chan's passing, that he had learned about her scars. She had written him a letter, to be delivered after her death, in case he should ever require the knowledge later. It was in reading this letter, that Watanuki learned one of the most important lessons of his life: to do all you could to help those close to you, because you might never know the things they bore for your sake.

Once his bereavement, and the shock of the letter had passed, Watanuki examined himself, unsparingly dissected his every memory of his time spent with her, every call and every gesture passed between them over the years, for the sake of being sure that he had nothing to regret, in light of what he had learned.

Fortunately, he found he didn't. But it had been a unsettling cautionary lesson to him, which he carries to this day.

He has now paused, to see whether any of them have questions, but all he gets is a wall of expectant Doumeki silence.

"You can be sure that the prices each of you pay--," now looking to Shiori and Kiyoshi, "--will be at least as serious as what your great-grandfather Shizuka paid. Because you admit some responsibility in Ryou's injuries, I predict they will most likely be more. Understand that it is not myself who sets these balances. I don't set the value of the things I do or bring about for those who come to me. It is nature and fate, that demand balance. And because you hold some responsibility, nature has already taken that into account."

It is Haruka who asks, looking up from her tea, with her children watching her. "When will Watanuki-sama know these prices?"

"That is where I must ask Haruka-chan's help. I will need to look into Ryou's condition, which means I will have to seek outside the shop, in the only way I am able. Through dreams. Because Haruka-chan has managed a temple, you are the best person to help me make a place I can safely search from. And I will need you to guard this place, while I'm searching."

For the first time since her arrival, the fear, sadness, and exhaustion clear from Haruka's eyes, and they go sharp on him. "This way of searching, it sounds dangerous for you."

"Because of the circumstances, I expect it might be. Normally when I travel in dreams, I go to where a person is sleeping. But Ryou is not in a normal sleep, so I will have to go to a different sort of place. This is why I'll need you to be very diligent, for as long as I'm gone."

Haruka straightens, and gives him a firm nod. "Tell me what I must do, then."

**

Before he takes up Yuuko's kiseru, before he lays himself back on the heavily warded bed, in the kekkai which Haruka has helped him make, he motions for her to sit next to him.

"I feel you should know, that I have some responsibility in this, as well."  
"You?" she draws back to blink at him.

"Before Ryou-san went across the park, he came here. And I felt something would happen today. I could have stopped him. But I hesitated."

"Did you know, that something would happen to _him_?" she asks, and Watanuki has to shake his head.  
"I didn't know specifically. I didn't know it would involve him. But I ought to have paid attention. I ought to have kept him here. Even though he was set on running to his party...."

"Watanuki-sama, with all due respect, I'm not sure--."  
"You said once, that you trusted me with him. And I have failed you," Watanuki insists. "For that reason, I intend to pay part of his price. Because you cannot pay as much. And your other children will pay very high prices already. I am sorry for that. I will do all I can to prevent them suffering too much, and you as well. But Haruka-chan, it truly pains me to tell you....that your family will not be the same."

For a moment she turns from him, aiming the heartbreak she cannot hide, to a far corner of the room. Watanuki aches, seeing the back of her hand against her mouth, this moment of helpless pain he cannot mitigate. And then that hand clenches, to a small tight fist, and she presses it down to her lap.

When she next finds her voice, Watanuki thinks he has never seen such strength in another person. He thinks that as terrible as the situation is that has roused that strength, he will always be proud of her, for this one small moment. Shizuka and his grandfather would have been proud too, he is certain.

"Watanuki-sama, our family has always been blessed, thanks to you. We know, we see the people who come to our temple to pray, we see all the things that can befall any family, at any time, for no reason at all. Those disasters have never touched us; not my father, not myself, not my children. And it was always because you have looked out for us, and done all in your power to protect us."

When she turns back to him now, she has mastered herself, and her gaze is as steady and resolute as ever. "What has happened today, could have happened to any of us, things just as bad could have happened to all of us, at any time, in any year. The fact that this is the first time, is proof of your extraordinary care for us. So please do not blame yourself. Because no matter the outcome, I most certainly could never blame you."

For this, for her courage, her wisdom, and her forgiveness, Watanuki needs to draw himself up, kneeling straight and then bowing low before her. "I promise you, Haruka-chan. I will do all that I can to help."

"You are still my friend, Watanuki-kun," she answers. "My son is very dear to me, but you are someone dear to me as well. So please take care."

**

He closes his eyes in his chilly, candlelit bedroom, and opens them in darkness.

There are no walls here, no ceiling or floor. No temperature or scent to the air. With years and experience, he has come to learn that this place is not really a place at all. It is the very absence of place, outside of time; the space left both by events past and those yet to come.

And yet, even though this is not a place, things can come here. He can come here, he suspects because of the time he nearly died, and fell into this nothingness. Part of him always knows how to reach it, and for that reason he must always tread with utmost caution, and never go in without a reliable way of getting out again.

This time, his way is secured by Ryou's gold medal, held tightly in his hand. Back in the room where he fell asleep, Haruka is watching to make sure he doesn't lose hold of it. She has promised to watch for as long as it takes until he wakes up, and Watanuki knows he can't lose track of that time, because it isn't passing in the same way he feels it here.

He must not tarry. He needs to find what he came here for, and with this in mind, he begins to walk with a purpose. He has learned not to try and predict what he will find in this noplace; it may be some remnant of a dream, some obscure clue which he will have to make the best of. The only thing he can depend on, is that he will find what he's supposed to find, because this is where the encounters of fate happen in their most basic, fundamental form. With no trappings, no distractions of the outside world.

This being said, he should not be surprised, and yet he entirely is, when he steps through the darkness and comes upon Ryou himself.

He's kneeling in profile, contemplating something in his lap, with the most terrible sadness Watanuki has ever seen in him. Tears fall from his eyes, dripping unheeded onto his hands, and though Watanuki approaches with caution, he can't stop himself from dropping down on his knees when he reaches the young man's side.

"...Ryou-san?" he hazards. "Is this--really you?"

"I failed. I'm so sorry. All that effort, and I--I screwed up after all." His voice is hoarse, thick with tears, and as much as Watanuki knows it could be unwise to touch Ryou in this darkness, it is very hard to resist putting just a comforting hand on his arm.

"I'm not sure that's right, Ryou-san," he offers. "You've been hurt, but you haven't failed at anything. It isn't your fault, at all."

"You don't know. I had to do something, and now I can't see it through. I don't know what I'm gonna do now."

Ryou has yet to look up from his lap, and so Watanuki scoots a bit closer, to see what he's so focused on.

And then his breath snags in his chest. As he sees the straw sandal, only half-woven, in Ryou's hands. Once he spots it, something takes form in the darkness just in front of them. A mound of black earth, half buried bits of woven straw poking out, here and there.

And leading up from the mound, emerging from nothing at all, a tall bushy bamboo tree. Identical to the tree in Watanuki's yard.

He'd had it wrong. All these years, he'd interpreted it completely wrong. The farmer, the goddess, the straw sandals and the tree.

"No," he murmurs aloud, shaking his head in firm denial. "No, I was the farmer. Not you, that doesn't make sense. _I'm_ supposed to be the one waiting."

"You think I wasn't waiting?" Ryou asks. "My whole life, I was waiting. Before I was born, I was waiting. There's only one thing I've ever wanted. And there for just a minute, I thought I might've had it."

At those words, a flare of caution makes Watanuki draw back, staring hard at Ryou, his white kyudo-gi, now bearing dark soaked bloodstains, the broken yumi in pieces behind his heels, its string curling off loose, into the black nowhere.

"You aren't Doumeki Ryou," Watanuki states.

"I'm the part of him you need to talk to, right now." Ryou turns his tear-stained face, to look at Watanuki. The tears have stopped for the moment, but just barely. "Right now, he's someplace even further than this. But I'm the part that will always be around, if you come looking."

"So you're....Ryou's soul?" It figures, Watanuki thinks, with only a mild touch of hysteria, that Ryou would turn out to be the exception in everything Watanuki does. He's held a person's soul before, but this would be the first time he's ever actually spoken to one.

Except that Ryou shakes his head. "I'm his purpose. For him, I'm more important than his soul. I'm the part that knows. When he knows things, I'm the reason why. When he does things, or makes choices, I'm how he chooses."

Watanuki frowns, feeling he might be grasping this, but he isn't quite sure. "What about when he sees things, or those dreams of his?"  
"That sight is in his blood. But yeah, I'm the reason for the dreams. My grandfathers had to leave you something, they couldn't just leave you alone. So that's why I came to exist."

"Exist....," Watanuki repeats.

And then it all drops into place, with a stunning thud, directly on top of his brain. "Shizuka's wish."

Shizuka's _last_ wish, to be brutally precise. The one he'd sealed, refusing to hear it, but of course Shizuka's damned obduracy would outlast him, it would probably outlast Watanuki, the earth, the sun, and all the planets.

If there is a single word for what Watanuki feels in this moment, he has never seen it or heard it spoken in any language. He doesn't know whether to be shattered, mortified at his own blindness, or vexed beyond rational comprehension. Given the day he's been having, he's leaning quite heavily toward the latter.

In fact, the only thing keeping him from dropping all pretense at etiquette and vehemently cursing Shizuka, for going off on his own and doing things Watanuki _never asked_ him to do, for dying on him and yet still meddling in Watanuki's life, and worst of all for dragging his innocent descendant into the whole mess, is Ryou himself. Or whatever part of Ryou this is, now watching him with a distinct expectancy.

At which point the other shoe drops for Watanuki, as does his jaw. " _Your_ wish. Is that was this is about?" He gestures to the sad mess of raveled straw in Ryou's hands, the tree and the dirt mound.

"He wasn't gonna tell you his wish. Because you'd say you couldn't grant it. He knew a long time ago, he had to just do his best, and make it come true himself." Looking back to the mound of buried sandals, Ryou's shoulders slump again. "But now he can't. The reason I'm here can't happen. I don't know what we'll do, now."

Watanuki doesn't like this look of defeat. Whatever it is this Not-Quite-Ryou thinks he's supposed to do, all Watanuki cares about is that he continues to exist. Ryou will have to fight for it, which means this part of him must hold tight to the same determination which brought him into being.

"Okay, listen," Watanuki says. "Let's set aside the matter of wishes, for right now. I came here to see what's to be done about you, Ryou-san. The both of you."

Ryou heaves a burdened, impatient sigh. It sounds oddly reminiscent of Shizuka, actually. "There's nothing to be done. You don't get it. His brain is hurt. Even if you could get him back this far, he wouldn't be able to walk, or talk, or function right. And I know how your prices work. There's no way you can fix this."

If there is one thing he really hates, Watanuki learns in that instant, it's being told how to do his job. And maybe this is the thing he's wanted all day, something to vent at, something to argue against. At any rate, the time feels perfectly ripe for it, and he seizes on the opportunity, jabbing a stern finger toward his companion.

"First, you don't get to tell me what I can or cannot fix. You may be very gifted, but I still know things you don't. You let me worry about the prices, got that? Secondly, you better not forget what you promised me today." He brandishes the gold medal in his hand, and Ryou's eyes pop gratifyingly wide in surprise.

"You said you were coming back for this, and don't you _dare_ think I'll let you off the hook, just because of what happened. You make a promise to me, then you keep it, no exceptions."

"But..." Now Ryou is not at all sure of himself, and Watanuki interrupts, refusing to let doubt take him off.

"No buts. You tell me what it will take to bring you back again, and I will _make it happen_. And while I'm doing that, you are going to remember something. Are you listening? Because this might be the most important thing I ever tell you."

Ryou blinks, and then nods, and Watanuki reaches over, pushing the half-finished sandal aside, so he can hold Ryou's hands tightly.  
"You. You are not allowed to let Ryou disappear. If you're his purpose, then you _push_ him, you yell at him, do whatever it is you do, but do not. Ever. Let him give up."

Glancing back over at the buried sandals, caught up in the headlong rush of his roused temper, suddenly Watanuki finds that they irritate him to no end. "And that. For heaven's sake stop with that, it's foolish and creepy. I'm already here, I never _went_ anywhere, and if you got that idea from Shizuka, so help me I will send someone to leave _piles_ of shoes all over his damned headstone."

He leaves off there, with Ryou peering quizzically at him, aware that he's passing the point of making sense. But he feels better, he'd gotten some things off his chest, and it's helped.

"Now," he tells Ryou, releasing his hands and sitting back to give him some space. "Tell me what we have to do for you."

**

When he next awakens in his bed, it's with the looming urgency of one who knows they've made possibly the most audacious wager of their lives, and has no idea how they're going to back it up.

Shiori and Kiyoshi's prices won't be enough. What he will add will almost make it enough. In order to reach Ryou and bring him back, Watanuki will have to call in every favor he can. And Ryou will have to owe him for this, for a long time to come.

However he doesn't get to explain any of this to Haruka right away, because as soon as he's awake, four hours after he'd laid down, Haruka informs him first, that there is a guest waiting on the rear porch, because second, the enormous nine-tailed fox now in the rear parlor won't permit that guest to enter.

"You're taking this all very well," Watanuki offers to Haruka, on the way to the parlor. She walks stiffly beside him, thanks to hours of sitting on the floor and frankly, she looks exhausted to the end of her endurance.  
"This is certainly the most eventful visit I've had here," she replies, with a certain studied blandness, and Watanuki has to smile.

"I'll try to keep this meeting short, though I can't promise with this particular guest. Would you like to lie down awhile?"

"I'd rather wait. Kiyoshi made coffee earlier. That and some cold water on my face, should be enough."

While Haruka retires to the kitchen with her son and daughter, Watanuki works his way past Mugetsu, barring the rear doorway, full-sized and bristled all over. "There, it's all right," he soothes, stroking down the fox's rumpled fur. "Thank you for coming out to protect them, while I was gone."

"Not that it was necessary," pouts his guest. "That boy's relatives are in no danger from _me_."  
"I'm so very sorry you had to wait out here," Watanuki tells Jorougumo, pasting on his most unflappable smile. "As you can see, it's an unusually busy night, for this shop. Is there something I can do for you?"

"What," Jorougumo blinks her wide black eyes at him, pursing her red lips in possibly the least innocent look of innocence ever. "I can't stop in, just to offer my regards to my favorite little Shopkeeper?"

"Jorougumo-san praises me too much," answers Watanuki. "Of course I would be pleased to exchange regards with you, at any other time. But I have several customers at the moment, and I have to apologize for being unable to receive you properly tonight. If you would like to come again, another time....?"

Jorougumo examines her dark, sharp nails, and sighs a wistful-sounding sigh. "Well, I suppose there's nothing to be done, in that case. I can only pass on the message I've been requested to."

"Message? From whom?"

"You should know, your little apprentice boy is much more respectful than either you or his ancestor at that age. He made such an impression on my subjects, that I simply had to go peek at him for myself." Giving him a narrow, coquettish look from the corner of one eye, she adds, "He is quite cute. I don't blame you for keeping him around. Who knows but he could grow up to be very charming."

Watanuki understood a long time ago, that baiting is what the spider matron does best. As far back as she goes, it's entirely possible she invented it. He also realizes that for right now, in spite of the very tight schedule he is under, he has no choice but to let her play this out to her satisfaction. For all that she may act pouty and disinterested, she has come to bring him something, and no doubt she is well aware that right now, Watanuki needs every bit of help he can get.

"It sounds as if Jorougumo-san approves of Doumeki Ryou. He once mentioned how he had always done his best to respect your family and subjects, in his home."

"Oh, so are we speaking of him in the past tense, now? I heard he might be dying."

If she were remotely human, Watanuki might hate her for that. But she is a natural predator, borrowing a human shape, and whatever compassion she may be capable of feeling, he cannot expect it to manifest in any recognizably human way.

"If you heard this from your family, they've been admirably attentive. Ryou-san has met with a serious accident, yes. His family are here, to see what can be done to save him."

"Hm, I told those children they were being foolish, to fuss over one human who only gave them their rightful due. But it seems your boy is something special. They petitioned me to come all the way here, and offer what they could, so that he might live."

Behind his discreet nod of acknowledgment, Watanuki is floored. But he knows, the closer he steps to Jorougumo's web, the more exponentially cautious he must be.

"That is quite an extraordinary offer," he says, in the calmest voice he's capable of. "Please accept my apologies on Ryou-san's behalf, for having troubled you and your subjects to such an extent."

"A dreadful inconvenience, all of it," she agrees, waving one languid hand and sighing with a touch of petulance. "And I don't even get the satisfaction of drinks with the Shopkeeper."

"I'm so sorry to disappoint," Watanuki murmurs dutifully. Though behind that, he is well aware that she has named her own price, for acting as the agent in this exchange. "As I said, you are welcome to return another time, and permit me the opportunity to host you properly. I believe I recall that Jorougumo-san was fond of the Bordeaux we had, some while ago."

"That was nice. But did you know, there is a Musigny Burgundy, where your boy lives? When I return, I should like him to toast my health with a glass of that."

Carefully, carefully, Watanuki tells himself. "Ah, I wouldn't see any problem obtaining the wine for Jorougumo-san. And I will of course be pleased to enjoy it with you."

"Oh, don't tell me he doesn't drink. How tiresome."

Watanuki has a second of wondering whether he should remind her of Ryou's condition, before his eye registers the challenging little gleam she's sending his way. Testing and baiting, this is always the way with her. And truly he should be more hesitant about putting Ryou into any room she's occupying, except....

Except that apparently, for whatever reason, she is confident enough that Ryou will be able to be there.

"No, I'm sure Ryou-san would enjoy a drink. With Jorougumo-san, it would be a tremendous honor for him."

"Good," she nods smartly. "Then it's a date. I expect you to make sure he and his Musigny are ready to meet with me, in one year. For now, your porch is damp and unpleasant, and if you're not going to amuse me, I would rather go home."

"I'm sorry again for the trouble," Watanuki bows. "Please travel safely, and give my deepest thanks to your family. As for myself and the Doumeki family, you have my word that we will not forget their assistance."

"Of course you won't. It's not as though the Spider's Kiss is shared with just anyone. Here." She strides up to him, pulling a shiny black vial from the bosom of her corset. "You must be the one to deliver it, in your usual way. It will help the problem with his blood, the rest is up to you."

"Kiss?" Watanuki asks, suddenly apprehensive "You mean....venom?" He examines the tiny stoppered bottle she drops in his palm, engraved on one side with the shape of a black widow spider.

"You are sort of cute when you're being fastidious. Our Kiss holds the power to subdue the blood. When my subjects heard of your boy's head injury, this is what they offered. If we deliver it personally, he would end up a victim. But if the Shopkeeper delivers it, the Kiss will act as it's needed."

Now that she mentions it, Watanuki remembers something about that, how some spider venom works on their prey's physiology. In ancient medicine, spider webs were used to treat wounds, and to help the blood clot in case of hemorrhaging.

"By deliver....I just want to be clear. You mean I should make him swallow it?"  
She cocks her head and blinks at him. "Only if you want to poison him. A kiss with intent, that is the power that directs this gift."

"Kiss," he repeats, studying her carefully. He wouldn't put it past her at all, to offer the sort of help which would instigate a world of trouble as a side-effect, purely for her own amusement. However as closely as he looks, he sees no malice, or any more than the usual amount of wickedness in her.

"I've seen the Shopkeeper act bold and clever before," she tells him. "It was rather a long time ago, so maybe you've grown too complacent here? I will say, with all the trouble I've taken, it would disappoint me awfully if you don't follow through."

And with this she concludes their interview, twirling about on her shiny high-heeled black boots, giving a little flip to her hair, and stepping off the engawa into a small, brief cyclone of spinning silk. It lasts but a second and then she's gone, leaving behind a cool dry scent of dust and cobwebs, threaded faintly with the memory of her cloying perfume.

 

*****


	14. Chapter 14

14.

"We don't have a great deal of time, so please forgive me for being blunt," Watanuki tells the Doumekis, once again assembled in the rear parlor.

"As I've warned you, the prices for your request will be quite high, due to the difficulty involved. From what I've learned of Ryou-san's current condition, the chances of him waking on his own are not good. And if he does awaken, he will be severely impaired, possibly for life. He will have difficulty with sight and speech. He will be unable to walk, unable to do many things for himself. In short, if he wakes, he will not be the person you once knew."

Here he pauses, giving Haruka a moment to press her hands over her eyes, and collect herself. It is a longish moment, and at the end, she brings her palms together, fingers tipped to her forehead, lips moving in a brief prayer.

Then she opens her eyes on him. "What can be done, then?"

"The price, for Shiori-san, will be her ability to speak. For Kiyoshi-san, the use of his legs."

Here he stops, not for them, but for himself. Because this is the most terrible, most painful part of granting requests; being forced to examine the severed edges left by the surgical exactness of fate. Shiori had spoken the words which led to this crisis, and now must pay accordingly. Kiyoshi's fault was in failing to move, to act on what he had seen coming. His failure too, is now his price.

And though he cannot show it, must not show it, Watanuki has been bleeding inside, ever since these sentences entered his mind, whispered to him by that distant knowing, acquired through years of errors and injuries, and the suffering he'd caused those around him, when they had to see him bear the outstanding costs.

He no longer stints on those costs, not even the worst ones. Yet in instances like this, his heart hurts just as much as if a piece had been torn out of it, to balance the accounts.

However, at least in this respect, Ryou's siblings do their family proud. There are no gasps of shock, no tears. Shiori reaches over and takes her mother's hand, a look of grim silent acknowledgment passing between them. Kiyoshi flattens his palms on the table, staring at the wood beneath, and pulls in a deep breath.

"And my brother. What will he have to pay?" In answer to the looks from Haruka and Shiori, he adds, "Watanuki-sama said our prices wouldn't be enough. Who else is there, but Ryou?"

"I still--," Haruka begins, but Watanuki raises a hand, shaking his head.  
"My apologies, Haruka-chan. But you've done all I'm able to permit. Ryou-san's price will be time."

Haruka slumps back, hand over her mouth, and Shiori frowns between them. "What does that mean, time?"

"It may not be as much as Haruka-chan fears right now. Where Ryou-san has gone--the place he must be brought back from--will still influence him for awhile. There is a danger he could be lost to that place again, until he regains his full strength. Staying in this shop, under my protection, would be the safest situation for him, during that period. Once he's stronger, he can go back home. However I'll still require his services after that. For chores and errands, things I'm unable to do myself, until his debt to the shop is paid off."

Slowly, Haruka's fingers slip down, curling at her chin. "For....can I ask, how long his debt will last?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know that yet," Watanuki tells her. "Perhaps in the future, I'll be able to estimate. If he were to stay here full-time, I imagine it would be a shorter term. But Ryou-san should finish school, and go on to college if he wishes. As much as possible, he still deserves a normal life. So he will be a part-timer here, just as I was for awhile."

Once the prices have been explained, and formally accepted (with Haruka consenting on Ryou's behalf), Watanuki must make them binding. He takes a lavender-colored silk obi-age from his own collection, and a special pair of cutting shears from the storeroom. While Haruka, Shiori, and Kiyoshi watch, he cuts the crinkled silk in half, with regular sewing scissors, making this the first miscellaneous item to go on Ryou's debt account.

After preparing his calligraphy kit, with the ink and brush he normally only uses for notes sent to Ame-Warashi and those of her ilk, he draws a character on each of the silk pieces.

On the first, he writes

  
 _Suijaku_

 

On the second,

 

  
 _Damaru_

 

While waiting for the ink to dry, he explains his purpose. "Doumeki Kiyoshi, Doumeki Shiori," looking to each of them in turn. "You will leave here wearing half of a charm. The one reading Damaru, will go to Shiori-san. This one that says Suijaku, Kiyoshi-san will wear. When the wish is complete, you will see these whole again, and your prices will be taken."

That said, he takes each scrap of silk, and cuts it in half down the center, with the shears from the storeroom, since anything cut with these particular shears retains its connection to the original whole. So he will give them each half of their charm, and the other halves he will take to Ryou. Through this means, Ryou's loss of speech and loss of mobility will be transferred to his siblings.

"You may or may not choose to believe me," he tells them, as he ties their halves of the charm to their left wrists. "But this price is not a punishment from me. Just as I cannot forgive you, it is not my place to judge you either. If there is any sentence here, it comes from the balance demanded by nature, not from me personally. I would never willingly harm either of you, or any member of your family."

"We understand," Kiyoshi nods to him, though he glances at his bound wrist with certain dread. "I can live with this one thing, if it means my brother doesn't have to live with all of it."

"It's more than fair," Shiori puts in, but there is a brittle tautness about her which concerns Watanuki, and for this reason he asks her alone to walk with him, when he returns the shears to the storeroom.

She follows him in silence, waits outside while he ducks in to place the shears in their box on the shelf, and once he steps out and closes the door behind him, he addresses her.

"Shiori-san, I'm aware that your price is very high. And because of that, because you are paying it on behalf of another person, I am able to offer you some advice, if you would hear it."

"Even if I don't deserve it?" She stands rigid, head down and hands clasped tightly behind her back.

"You did a deeply regrettable thing. But I don't believe you would have spoken against your brother if you were not angry and unhappy, and for this reason, I feel I ought to caution you. Would you care to hear me out?"

For an answer, she closes her eyes tightly, holds a breath, and nods.

"I'd like you to consider this a first glimpse of how dangerous anger can be. I see strength in you, it reminds me of your mother, and your great-grandfather. But if you cannot master this anger of yours, it will destroy all that you have. I can tell you from experience, from people I have seen before, that this is only the beginning of what you and those around you could suffer. I am not exaggerating at all, when I tell you it is already endangering your soul."

As he speaks, her eyes open gradually, fixed on the floor between them. She is listening, with a kind of desperate, powerful intensity, and seeing this, Watanuki knows he was right to speak.

"I feel now....that Ryou sacrificed himself to save me. I was so furious back then, because it seemed like he had whatever he wanted. He already had someone he loved, I knew it. And....Kiyoshi's friend, he never even _looked_ at me, he was just....fixated on Ryou. I didn't realize that was a bad thing. All I wanted, was for someone to stop looking at him, and look at me."

When she glances back up to him, her eyes are hard and dark, and seeing her struggling with all her might to hold her brokenness together, Watanuki's heart goes out to her. Even moreso, when she draws herself up and speaks steadily to him.

"I didn't know that the person Ryou loves, he's never told them. He just said so, yesterday. And even though he tried to tell me, many times, that Kiyoshi's friend wasn't good, I wouldn't listen. It could easily have been me who was hurt, instead of him. Considering how I've acted, maybe it should have been. But now. If giving up my voice, means that Ryou won't lose his chance to share his feelings, with the person he cares for, then that is right. It's fair, and I'm glad to do it."

Watanuki thinks he might want to hug her, if the girl's fragile pride weren't all she had to hang onto right now. "You're a good person, Shiori-san. And even with what you're losing, you can still _do_ good. I truly hope you remember this. Even when your loss seems like a punishment. Please try to remember, that you can still do good in your life."

She gives a sharp, brief nod of acknowledgment, and then bows low before him. "Please help my brother, Watanuki-sama. Please do your best, and bring him back to us."

**

And then they are gone. Off for home, to wait on the fast-approaching rift in their lives; the final break between what always was, and what is yet to become of them. Watanuki has the bottle from Jorougumo, he has the charms he will use, and he has Ryou's medal, wrapped around his wrist like a monk's beads.

All that's left is to discover what his own price will be, and as sometimes happens, it seems he won't know until the moment's at hand. He had initially believed he could repay the measure of blood which Shizuka had given him all those years ago. But given Ryou's hospital treatment, a transfusion won't be necessary. And more importantly, there is a strong chance Watanuki's blood in particular could react in an unfavorable way with the substance offered by Jorougumo.

There is still something he will have to offer, besides wish-brokering and counsel, to bring Ryou back whole. But he will have to be alert to seize the moment when it comes to hand. This time, he absolutely must not fail to see clearly, for Ryou.

Since Mugetsu is already out, Watanuki leaves him in charge of guarding the shop, before he settles himself back on the chaise, taking a moment to center himself, before he lights Yuuko's kiseru once more.

**

When he finds himself blinking around the beige walls of the hospital room, Watanuki allows himself one small breath of relief. It's never a sure thing, trying to reach places in the real world he hasn't seen before, but it seems that luckily his tie to Ryou has proven strong enough to bring him directly to this room.

It is not the bare, antiseptic place he'd expected. There are certainly enough machines over by the bed, humming and blinking away. But the recessed fixtures are turned low, casting thin light and shadows through the room, and the overall ambiance is restful. The only other light comes from a reading lamp, casting a golden pool over a comfortable-looking chair, where a man is currently sleeping sitting up. He must have dozed off recently, as his fingers are still curled between the pages of a cloth-bound book in his lap.

This would be Doumeki Takuma, then. As he's taking the steps to Ryou's bedside, Watanuki briefly notes that the man looks older than he'd expected. Straight silver hair, reading glasses slid halfway down his nose. His face is lined with age, but mild; he may have looked a great deal like his son Kiyoshi, when he was younger. Watanuki can't help but wonder briefly, whether this man understands anything that's going on--behind the scenes, so to speak--with his son.

And then he's there, at Ryou's bedside, and no longer has any excuse to look away.

This is where all the stark white in the room is, it is all concentrated on this one bed. White sheet, pulled up to the young man's chest, swathes of white gauze around his head, like a turban; bandages on his arms, peeking out from the collar of his hospital gown, a faded blue checker pattern, the only color at all here. Ryou's skin hardly stands out, so pale, except for the glaring purple bruises on his cheek, his arms, the dark violet shadows ringing his closed eyes.

Only belatedly does Watanuki think to appreciate his luck; Ryou at least isn't on a ventilator. He has I.V. drips taped to his arms, an oxygen tube at his nose. Various wires attached to his skin, presumably leading to all those machines monitoring him. But at least he's breathing on his own, and surely that's a good sign, oh please let it be a good sign, and now Watanuki really needs to get a grip on himself, because if he doesn't he's going to shatter where he stands, and be no good at all to anyone.

Breathe. Pay attention. He has work to do, here. There are people who have knowingly sacrificed themselves, so that he would come here and do what's needed. He cannot be broken by the scene before him, he must set that aside and act.

"Ryou-san," he says quietly, glancing to the sleeping father, to see whether he'll stir. He doesn't, and so Watanuki sits on the edge of the bed, and reaches for Ryou's cool white hand.

"Ryou-san, it's time for you to wake up. If you can hear me, then listen. I'm here to bring you back."

There's no response, and Watanuki hadn't expected any, yet. With his free hand, he reaches into the sleeve of his tunic, and pulls out the two silk scraps he'd cut earlier. They feel denser, heavier in his hand now, and concentrating on them, he can sense a faint tugging, as with a paperclip brought near a magnet. This is good, this means they're seeking their other halves, and should work as he'd intended.

He ties both the scraps around Ryou's left wrist, just as he'd done to Kiyoshi and Shiori earlier. In a moment he will awaken the charms, but now it's time to use the spiders' gift first.

"I hope you'll forgive me for this," he murmurs reluctantly, before fishing the small glass bottle out from the front opening of his tunic, similar to how Jorougumo had done. He'd reasoned that if she had been able to transport it through the shop's barriers that way, then he should be able to travel here with it as well. Over his heart; from a certain bizarre point of view (this was Hitsuzen for you, in a nutshell), it was fitting.

"For the record, this was not my idea. And if this kills me, I apologize ahead of time for failing." This last is more a grim joke than anything. The spider matron is far too canny to bring down the world of chaos and disaster which would result from killing him. Besides, he imagines she would much rather keep him alive, and go on amusing herself at his expense for ages to come.

At least he fervently hopes so.

"You'll have to bear with me, I didn't get very clear instructions on how this is supposed to work," he mentions to Ryou. He's aware he's stalling, but that doesn't make his excuse any less true. A kiss with intent, is what Jorougumo had told him, but what does that even mean? He's never kissed anyone with intent, he's only ever been kissed by people intent on teasing him, how on earth is he supposed to know how to....

Oh. Right. Oh good god, _this_ is supposed to be his price?

He sees the bottle is shaking before he registers that actually it's his hand, trembling with nerves. Because he is a hundred and seven and Ryou is _sixteen_ ; because Ryou trusts him, and Ryou's mother trusts him, and Ryou's father is sitting _right over there_. Even worse to contemplate, there is someone else out there, someone Ryou must have been saving his first kiss for, such things are tremendously important at his age, and bloody hell there is so much that is _so wrong_ with this, that Watanuki can't even line it all up in proper order so he can panic over it.

Insane, that's what this is. Insane, and wrong, and completely unreasonable. And as soon as he next sees Jorougumo he'll want to rake her over the coals, because he knows, he is one hundred percent positive that wherever she is, she is enjoying this far too much.

But insane or not, it doesn't change a damned thing. Ryou is lying here next to him in a coma. And in his shaking grip, Watanuki holds the means for bringing him out. There are no other options, there is no other choice he can see. He needs to figure out this issue of intent, and he needs to do it now.

He takes a breath, presses his hands to his lap so they'll be still, and makes himself look, really look closely, at Ryou.

"What do I do with you?" he asks, trying to work the problem out aloud. "My intent. What is it I want from you?" Ryou's family want him back because they love him. He is their brother, their son. But what is he to Watanuki?

"You're my friend, you know that. And you remind me, so much, of people I've loved. But I've seen you grow up. You were remarkable when I first met you, and now I'm seeing you on your way to becoming someone extraordinary--."

Had he known, he now wonders, that he had loved Haruka, and Shizuka, back when they were around? He knew it afterwards, he knew it in retrospect. But had he truly been cognizant of it, at the time he'd known them?

Maybe on the night Shizuka had brought that cupcake, for his birthday. Maybe the time they were bickering, because Shizuka started something over some spots on his beer glass, and five minutes into some stern words Watanuki caught the edge of a merry gleam in Shizuka's eye and it was so startling that he went dead silent. And then burst out laughing, himself.

Maybe that time Haruka had stayed for hours, teaching Watanuki his favorite bawdy drinking songs on shamisen. Or any of a few dozen other occasions, really.

Point being....well, what was the point, in admitting he'd loved someone after they were dead? Honestly, what good did it do anyone, to wait until it was much too late to let them know?

"The problem," he supposes aloud, "is that I'm already promised to someone. I've been waiting for Yuuko-san. I'm still waiting. This doesn't mean I can't love other people. But they....you, aren't the reason I'm still here. And how is that fair to you? Or anyone else? You will grow up, you'll become old someday. Just like Shizuka and Kohane-chan. Just like your mother. And I won't. I'll always be like this, every year the same, while you change."

It is a curious thing, to unburden himself like this, to someone sleeping. He's never had the occasion to do this, and its been years upon years since he felt safe trusting anyone with his deepest conflicts. His burdens have been his alone, to carry alone, as part of his price.

Or so he's always felt, up until this moment, actually.

"If it's really your purpose to keep me company," he tells Ryou, now considering that most recent discussion. "If that is something you've been set on all this time, then I can't think it would be right of me, to refuse you. And there's the issue of your promise to come back, don't think I've forgotten that."

Now he lifts the bottle again, hand steadier now, and works the stopper loose. "If this works by intent, then my intent....is to see you fulfill your purpose. And keep your promises. You have so much yet to do in this world, Ryou-san. And I intend, with all my heart, to see you do it."

He tilts the bottle toward Ryou, "Cheers," and then tips it up to his lips. Two drops and the bottle is empty, but it seems this is plenty; there is a brief, hot buzzing sensation, and then his mouth goes numb. He has a moment to hope this is daring enough to suit Jorougumo, and then he swiftly bends down to deliver the kiss, before the venom incapacitates him.

 _Come back_ , he thinks, willing it fiercely, as he presses his lips against Ryou's. _Wake up, so you can move forward with this life of yours. Wake up and find the person you love, and tell them, because life goes so fast and every day you have is precious. Come back to your family, come back to me, come back to this world because it needs you, your purpose here is so important._

He can't feel his mouth, or half his face, and he has no idea if this is working, if it's enough. He presses his palms gently to Ryou's cheek, his jaw, as if he could pull the conscious living presence of him up through the skin, and he ransacks his knowledge, memories, every technique he's used, every trick, every wild-ass spur of the moment invention.

In a brief flash of hysterical desperation, he thinks it figures that his first kiss, probably the only kiss he will ever give anyone, would be such an awkward travesty. Kissing someone unconscious, unable to even feel if he's touching their lips. Though at least if this kiss is the most awful in the history of kisses, neither of them will ever really know....

And that's it. That's what does it for him.

He cannot, after all the years he's endured alone, and finally being given any reason at all to kiss another person--any remotely acceptable person--allow this one and possibly only kiss he gives to disappear into ignominy. For whatever the value of this, whatever it may stand for, it at least should be something worth remembering.

Spurred by this conviction, Watanuki stops thinking, and starts _meaning_ it. He may not be able to feel with his mouth, but closing his eyes, he can feel with his hands, the soft contour of Ryou's cheek, and he can brush his thumb at the corner of Ryou's lips. He can feel his breath puffing out against Ryou's skin, the astonishing nearness thrumming in the small space between them.

Is it like this for everyone? This breathless, dizzy awareness of another person, this extreme _personal_ closeness, the terrifying sense of his own vulnerability....his pulse is throbbing in his throat, his ears, but when he sees the colored spots bursting behind his eyelids, he thinks of the venom, and that he must be running out of time.

Reaching over blindly, he puts one hand over Ryou's wrist, feeling for the charms, willing them to life, freeing them to take what he's assigned them--Ryou's fated silence, his infirmity--and return to their other halves. Somewhere far off, he thinks a bell is chiming, this dizziness is getting sickening, and he feels his whole existence, his awareness, being dragged away by some inexorable heavy force.

Still he fights, until the last possible moment, holding on with all that he is, until a violent shove and jolt, and he bolts up in furious despair, _no_ he can't be thrown back to the shop now, _no no no_...

And then he opens his eyes.

On a pair of amber eyes, shocked wide open.

And for several long seconds, all he and Ryou can do, is stare at each other.

 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Notes:   
> 1\. You can see the Obi-age in use at [This Link](http://www.risingsunimports.com/articles/howtotieobi/), which is also a handy picture guide for if you ever need to tie an obi. Just don't believe what that author says about it being easy. Sure it looks easy enough. But my first attempt at a basic taiko obi took about an hour, and a lot of profanity (in between gasping for air, because kimono are not for breathing in) and the whole thing still looked funky when I was done.
> 
> 2\. This chapter has some kanji geekery going on, and it horked up the flow of the story to define it in the scene, but I didn't want to leave folks totally adrift there. Basically, going by the dictionaries I used, Suijaku as Watanuki writes it, may be defined as weakness, debility, breakdown, prostration. And Damaru indicates mute, tacit, silent. There's an alternate reading of the Damaru character: Moku, which more specifically means tacit.
> 
> Honestly it kinda blows my mind that people actually learn to read Japanese. (Although I did think the Suijaku character was really cool, since part of it resembles the character for Yumi, but with what appears to me like a breakage in it.)


	15. Chapter 15

15.

 

"Watanuki?" Ryou manages. At the moment, Watanuki can only nod.

"This....it's really you?"

He still has his hand on Ryou's cheek, he sees, and quickly pulls it back. Withdrawing to allow some space between them, he swallows hard. Learning that here, his mouth actually works. "It's me. Yes."

"And I'm. I'm really me? I'm....Ryou?"

Blue-checked hospital gown, bandages and bruises all over, all that's missing are the tubes and wires. "Yes," Watanuki nods, and knot of breath he'd been holding back abruptly lets go. "I see you, Ryou."

Ryou blinks slowly, every bit as flabbergasted as Watanuki, and then his gaze wanders to the side. "Okay. Then. How come I'm here?"

Here, as Watanuki discovers looking around, is the front porch of the shop, just outside the open door of his bedroom. It's currently a soft spring evening, the generic sort he'd become accustomed to with these dreams, a long time ago.

Though it's been a long while indeed since he's been here, he thinks, watching a lone sakura petal flutter past on a nonexistent breeze.

"This is a dream," he notes absently. "A very old one."  
"Yeah. I've had this one before. But. I was never _me_. Hey." He's frowning hard, when Watanuki glances back to him. "Did you kiss me, just now?"

"You shouldn't be in this dream," Watanuki says, just as it occurs to him. "And neither should I."  
"I was kinda getting scared here, by myself," admits Ryou. "But. Um."

"I gave you my first kiss." Seeing his other hand still grasping Ryou's bare wrist, he carefully draws it back to his lap. "I did it as part of the price, to save you," he adds, feeling some clarification is important here.

"Save me...." Ryou squints in curiosity, and then looks down at himself, and sucks in a sharp breath. "Oh my god. Oh god, what did you pay for it? What did you have to wish?"

"That was all, so far," Watanuki reassures him. But of course Ryou would know, the way he's always seemed to know, what sort of cost 'saving' him would entail. "Your family--."

"No," Ryou interrupts vehemently. "No, whatever it is, take it back. I won't let them do this, I can't take--." He shakes his head, frantic, and grabs at Watanuki's arm. "They can't pay for me, it's too much, I _know_ it's too much."

"Ryou-san. It's their choice." Knowing too personally how painful this truth is, doing his best to soften it. "I know it seems too much to you. But this was their wish, and I have to grant it."

"You don't!" Ryou all but shouts back at him. "You don't have to grant wishes all the time, you can turn down the ones that are too high, and I know you don't love me, but I'm begging you, don't do this to my family, please...." He breaks off, arm over his mouth to stifle a sob, while Watanuki gapes at him, feeling like he's just been punched by a bus, right in the solar plexus.

"How could you. Think I don't love you?"

This is probably not what he'd meant to say. But out of the wreckage of his brain, this is what comes forth. And then from nowhere--or maybe everywhere; all these years alone, all this time without Shizuka or his grandfather, or Yuuko, losing all of them, and waiting, and still waiting with no one to hear his heart, hear the truth of his life, decades passing in confinement with no one who sees, no one who knows the stifling silence of his halted time, waiting, forever and ever waiting--it picks up momentum.

"You're my....closest living friend. I'd do anything I could, for you. Do you even know, how terrified I was today? I didn't know if you were hurt, or killed, or _in a ditch_ somewhere. You could have been eaten by spirits, hit by a train, and all I could think was that I let you go, when I should have stopped you, I should have kept you in the shop, and none of this would have happened. How _dare_ you say I don't love you, when I'm the one who had to tell your mother, and tell the price to your brother and sister, do you think that doesn't hurt me? Do you think I _enjoy_ bringing that suffering to people, Ryou?"

He knows he's gone too far, when the young man's expression crumples, and the tears flood over, and already Watanuki is scooting over again to prop him up, making soothing noises as Ryou curls in and weeps his heart out against Watanuki's chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry that was harsh. But you have to understand something. When people sacrifice for you like this--. They made a choice, because they don't want to lose you. The price was not too much, in their eyes. And....Ryou, are you hearing this?"

He waits for the young man's nod against his chest, listens and aches while the sobs taper off to sniffles, and then tentative hitched breaths.

"Yeah," answers a small choked voice.

"You have an obligation, now. Because of what they've given you. You have to wake up, and recover, and do your utmost to live your life fully. That was their wish, and now it will be up to you, to fulfill it. I've done all I can. Your family has done all they can. I'm here now, to tell you it's your turn."

"But I'm. I think I'm scared."  
"You don't have to worry. Your family is waiting, and when we wake up from here, I'll be waiting."

Slowly Ryou tilts away from him, still hunched over, elbows on his knees. He swipes an arm across his eyes, and then his nose, and Watanuki has to quell the fussy urge to to toss him a handkerchief.

"Did you. Mean that? What you said. You....love me?"

Watanuki had never told anything but the truth, in this place. And Haruka, who had kept him company for so many nights here, would be profoundly disappointed if he were to start lying now. But the answer to Ryou's question is so intricate, so complicated. And Watanuki has been working rather hard to pretend not to see what he should have seen, what probably anyone with eyes would have spotted months ago. Only now--( _"There's only one thing I've ever wanted..._ ")--it's come to face them both, and there's no avoiding it, not here.

"I do mean it," he answers soberly, and tries not to quail at the desperate hopeful look Ryou now sends his way. "I made a mistake a long time ago, in not telling certain people that I loved them. And I've had longer than you can imagine, to regret that. So while I'm able, you absolutely should know."

Now that that's out, he has to make himself hold Ryou's gaze, and steel himself for the rest.

"But I think you already understand. That I'm not someone you can confess to, Ryou. I am not at liberty, I'm not free to be that person for you. I'm still paying a price, and I can't go back on it."

"I know that," Ryou answers, subdued and unreadable now. "I mean, I was there, in all those dreams. I know how much my Grandfather Shizuka and Grandfather Haruka loved you, and they still couldn't change what you chose. I saw when you lost Yuuko-san. I saw what it did to you, from them."

"Then....you understand," Watanuki hazards.

"I understand about your choice." Ryou shrugs, and draws his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. "Maybe you'll have to wait for longer than I'm alive, and maybe not. But you should still have a person who loves you. And however it worked out, I wanted to be that person. I'm not talking about dates, or being a couple or any of that stuff. I just wanted to be the person who's by your side. For whatever you needed, as long as I could. That's all."

It does not escape Watanuki's notice, that Ryou is speaking in the past tense. And for the first time in this entire catastrophe, he lets himself take conscious measure of the anger that's been simmering away under his breastbone all this time. Quiet, cold, and so deadly that he doesn't dare let it out of the tightly sealed compartment where he's keeping it tucked away.

Hot noisy outrage is one thing, he's never had any trouble venting that. But this chill calculation is mortally dangerous; given the power at his disposal now it would be the work of moments, and so little effort for him to exact horrific lasting vengeance on Ryou's attacker, their family, their neighbors, all descendants of their line.

It would be too easy. And in a circumstance like this, anything that easy could only be a trap.

But that doesn't mean he's not tempted. That doesn't mean he doesn't _blister_ under his responsibilities, his better nature, and his promises. It isn't enough to know Hitsuzen has a guaranteed recompense in store for the people who put Doumeki Ryou in this condition. Sometimes waiting on Hitsuzen isn't enough. Sometimes doing the job with one's own hands seems like all that will suffice.

The only thing keeping this killing rage sealed to stillness inside him, is looking at the face of the person who would pay the most, were Watanuki to act on it. Since before they ever met, Ryou has only ever desired one thing. And with all else that's been taken from him, Watanuki cannot allow himself to be consumed by repaying Ryou's hurts and losses a hundredfold.

Because between the action and the cost, it would surely consume him. Once it was done, there would be nothing left of the person Ryou has sought a connection with all his life. There would be nothing left of their friendship, all those years invested.

And what, Watanuki forces himself to consider, would become of Ryou then?

"I know I can't--," Ryou starts, but Watanuki raises a hand to quiet him. Still staring into his other hand, curled loose on his knee. Studying the cup of his palm, wondering for the ten-thousandth time, how he can have so much power at his disposal, and yet so few real choices.

"I'm not going to tell you that you can't know what you want, because you're only sixteen," he says, his throat feeling tight and dry. "It's insulting, and I respect you more than that."

"Oh good," answers Ryou. " 'Cause if you did, I'd have to call you a hypocrite. And a high school dropout."

Watanuki permits himself a rueful tight-lipped smirk, tipping his head to grant the point. God he feels so tired right now. So tired and so old. "I will say you shouldn't dismiss the worth of being part of a couple with someone. Going on dates, any of that. Life changes us. The things we want, the things we regret, they will change. I've had a long time to see it. But regardless, the decision you're thinking of, this isn't the place to make it. When you wake up, you still have a long recovery ahead. That's the priority."

Glancing over, he sees Ryou has gone somber. "I'm not....gonna be the same person. When I wake up."  
"Truthfully, I don't know. It's hard to tell, with injuries like yours."

"No." Ryou closes his eyes, shakes his head slowly. "I know. I can feel it. I'm the same here, because this is a dream. But when I wake up. It will be a lot harder. To talk, and understand things. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do those things I wanted. That's why I'm scared."

The stinging urge to tears comes on so sudden, that it near to doubles Watanuki over where he sits. Yes, oh yes this was why he'd made such rash choices in the past, why he used to sacrifice himself just to stop the suffering of others. Because this isn't right, it's too cruel, of all the people in the world, this should never have happened to this blameless young man.

But just as he cannot rage and fight, he is not permitted to shed tears now. Not when he's the only person in this place to whom Ryou can look for reassurance, or the strength he will soon need. Here and now, Watanuki must be strong enough for the both of them.

Clasping Ryou's hand, he remembers how he'd done this before. For a young girl's spirit, trapped in death beneath a hydrangea tree, unable to move on. "You know I will help you. No matter what happens. No matter how you seem, I will always know who you are. And you won't be alone."

"But. What if I'm--."  
"No. Matter. What," Watanuki repeats, squeezing Ryou's hand. Just as he does, the breeze kicks up again, swirling dozens of sakura petals toward the engawa. One goes tumbling between them, and he reaches for Ryou's cheek, to get his attention.

"You're going to wake up soon. And everyone waiting will be very, very happy to see you."

At once, Ryou's eyes go wide, desperate and uncertain. "Wait, couldn't I just stay here awhile?"

"Certainly not. You only borrowed this dream, it's not yours to keep. Our time here is up, and the real world is waiting on us." The sakura breeze is a small whirlwind now, battering the petals thick between them, and he feels that tugging again, dragging him away.

"Watanuki!" Ryou calls, his hand slipping away, voice fading in the rushing wind.  
"Remember your promise," Watanuki shouts back. Then an old vivid memory compels him to add, "Don't disappear!"

The wind and the petals are blinding, and then he's tumbling through dark space, sucked across nothingness at a dizzying speed, with a high piercing whistle, growing louder, going right through his head, and then the world, his body, the chaise in the parlor all slam him sideways at once, and he's hauling breath into his lungs in one huge painful gasp.

In that instant someone shrieks, and he blinks his eyes open, and oh this is worse than the worst hangover in the history of creation.

"Watanuki-sama! Can you speak? Are you all right?"

"Guunf," he answers, squinting against the painfully blinding sunlight. A head bends in and blocks the light, and he makes out a face, peering down on him in alarm. "Haa--Haruka...chan?"

"Oh thank goodness." Haruka sits back, pressing a palm to her forehead, before smoothing it back over her hair. "I didn't think you were breathing just now, oh, you put a scare into me."

This is possibly the most feeling he's heard from her all in one rush before, and even though he himself feels absolutely hideous, he can't help the reflexive urge to reassure. "M'alright. Just, need a bit," flapping one weak hand.

"You did something dangerous, I knew it. I was worried, you didn't answer the phone, I thought I should come check on you--." Her words are rushed and scolding, and then they choke, her pale eyes going wide and overbright, one hand at her throat and the other over her mouth. Forcing back a cry, swallowing it down, while Watanuki's throat knots in sympathy.

"Sorry," he gets out. From her tone, from the strained lines about her eyes, staring at him, it's clear she's taxed past her limits, this was one more thing she didn't need to see, not right now. "I am fine." Or he would be, anyway. "Are you all right?"

"You saved him." A broken murmur over the tops of her knuckles. "My son woke up. Yesterday evening. He recognized his father, and me."

Watanuki knows no proper name for the feeling cracking open in his chest right now. It isn't just relief, it's more than fierce pride at Ryou, for fighting his way back to the world. There's a measure of trembling fear as well, the sort that follows the shock after a lighting bolt strikes, directly at one's side. And the immensity of his gratitude, swelling to proportions that make him feel miniscule by comparison.

Haruka is only a blur of bright wet in his vision; tears are tickling down his temples, and she shouldn't see him like this, no customer should see him like this, but if he weren't already lying down he would have collapsed with all of the everything breaking loose in him.

"Ryou. You made it." The words shivering out of him, like dry leaves borne on a wind gust. Up to the last moment in that dream, he hadn't been sure Ryou would find his way out. "I'm so glad."

"Can I bring you anything, Watanuki-sama? Tea, something to eat?"

It had worked. His gamble had paid off, the wish and the prices had balanced, and Ryou had come back. Watanuki doesn't need anything now, save for a very long time before he has to grant another request in which he is so deeply invested.

"No, thank you." He wipes at his eyes and is about to suggest she go back to her family, or more hopefully go rest, it's so obvious she needs it. But then in the back of his mind, the conversation is rewinding, and something jumps out.

"I'm sorry. You said yesterday evening, Ryou-san woke up?"  
Haruka nods. "Night before last, his vital signs improved. And then late yesterday, I thought I saw him move a bit. It was around half past six, when he opened his eyes."

"And. What time is it now?"  
"Ah..." Haruka glances down to her wrist, only to find it bare. "I'm not sure. Sometime after three?"

Over a day and a half he'd been out, no wonder he feels so flattened. He must have cut it very close in that dream. Not to mention that he'd effectively poisoned himself, in order to deliver the spider venom. Given his current physical condition, he thinks it's safe to assume such a stunt would have killed him, fifty years ago.

No doubt this is part of his price as well. Though he knows it's worth it, absolutely.

"The doctors say if Ryou continues to improve, they could discharge him in a few days," offers Haruka.

Which means Watanuki should get up, catch up on the dusting, work out a space for Ryou to stay while he convalesces. And food. Ryou's appetite has come to rival Shizuka's the last few years, Watanuki needs to prepare for that too.

Only belatedly does he realize that his automatic attempts at untangling his legs from his long tunic and rolling upright are getting him nowhere, and that's only when Haruka puts a hand to his shoulder, pressing him gently back to the chaise.

"Watanuki-sama, you really don't look well. I'd feel better if you rested awhile longer."

"Sorry. I can't," he answers, despite that he's lying prone already, and doesn't appear to have the energy to get himself up. "Spare bed. Dinner. Things to do."

"I hope you'll forgive me, but I checked your refrigerator earlier, to see if you needed anything. I don't think you'll have to worry about meals for awhile. And I'm certainly capable of laying out a bed."

"Your family," Watanuki manages to answer, struggling to keep his eyes open. "I shouldn't keep you from them."

Haruka frowns at him. "Please pardon me for pointing out that you are in this condition, because you took an enormous risk to help my family. Even if I can't pay anything more to this shop, I feel strongly that I owe some help to _you_. At the very least, I am sure this is what my grandfather would have wanted."

Things are quickly going very hazy for him; his body is demanding rest, whether he wants it or not. Still he's aware she's played a rather unfair card, and manages to grumble, "Shizuka. Always hovering....such a nuisance."

As the dim heaviness of dreamless sleep closes over him, he thinks he hears a fond, exasperated sigh.

 

*****


	16. Chapter 16

16.

 

Considering the injuries he'd sustained in the attack, Ryou's recovery goes better than anyone had the right to hope. Which is something Watanuki has to remind them both of occasionally, because as Ryou had predicted in that shared dream, he is not the same as he had been.

His smile, his laughter, his comfortable self-assurance; these are all conspicuously absent, in those first weeks he spends at the shop. When Ryou is awake, he is mainly silent. Remote, to a degree that compels Watanuki to keep a very close eye on him, fearing he might simply decide to slip away into thin air, when no one is looking. And Ryou needs considerable looking after at first, because even the most basic tasks--dressing himself, keeping track of his house slippers, eating meals--are all too much for him to manage on his own.

It isn't his physical coordination that hampers him, so much as his mental focus, which is apt to slip and break at any moment. He's capable of putting clothes on, but then forgets how to fasten them. Watanuki will remind him how to do one shirt button in the morning, and Ryou can do the rest, if nothing distracts him. But then by the next evening, the ability to undo buttons may well have left him. The same goes for eating utensils; his skills with them come and go, much like his listening comprehension, and conversation.

It doesn't take long before Watanuki can sense when Ryou is giving his utmost effort at engaging with his surroundings. For although his gaze remains distant, and his response to anything outside himself is a bare minimum, when he does manage to focus on some task, he looks to be putting all of himself into it, as long as he's able. And once he's exerted himself all he can, the evidence becomes clear in the extent of his withdrawal afterward.

"I appreciate that you put so much energy into breakfast," Watanuki tells him, on the morning of the tenth day. "But can I ask you to wipe your chin? You've got a bit of jam, right here," pointing to his own chin.

Ryou goes on staring in the vicinity of Watanuki's teacup, no change from the past five minutes, though his fingers twitch a fraction on the napkin on his knee.

"You know where your napkin is, you know what I'm talking about," Watanuki observes. "I don't mind helping, but maybe you'd like to try it for yourself?"

As much as possible, he wants to be mindful of Ryou's dignity, and his independence. For although Ryou shows no outward concern for either, Watanuki imagines there must be a great many things currently locked inside the young man's head, which he simply cannot pull together the mechanics to sort out and express just yet. He tries not to take over and do anything for Ryou, without first giving Ryou the choice to do it for himself. Having been an invalid himself a few times before, he knows how important these little allowances can be.

But at least for this particular morning, dealing with his napkin is one chore too many. Ryou chooses to ignore it, in favor of watching a far spot on the rug, with heavy-lidded eyes.

"Call me picky all you want." Watanuki scoots around the side of the table, to sit next to Ryou, and tug his napkin off his knee. "But personally, I don't think friends should let friends go around with jam on their chins." He dabs at the spot on Ryou's chin, and then finding it too sticky, dips the corner of the napkin into a nearby water glass, and has another go.

Ryou sits still and quiet under his ministrations, but the faintest frown crosses his features, when Watanuki is done.

"You want to tell me something?" He isn't expecting a response; Ryou looks very much as if the next item immediately on his agenda is a nap. But then the crease between his brows deepens, and again his hands shift on his knees, as if they want to grasp at something.

"Peach. Jam," he pronounces, with quiet care.

"Hm," considers Watanuki. "That's a good idea. When they come into season, maybe I'll send you out for a bushel, and make preserves. Though I'll warn you, I'm picky about peaches, too."

Ryou ponders this, with a stillness better suited to a tree or a boulder, before yawning widely. Watanuki glances outside, where the chilly morning is going foggy gray and quiet.

"Don't blame you for wanting to sleep," he says. "But I've got some knitting I want to finish. You want help getting to your bed?"

Evidently not, since Ryou only breathes out and tilts over where he sits, aiming in the general direction of Watanuki's lap. Before Watanuki can protest, or fend him off long enough to grab a pillow, his eyes have drifted shut and his head and shoulder are dead weight, pinning Watanuki's leg.

"Fine," Watanuki sighs, trying to shift about, knowing he might as well make himself comfortable. "But just this once."

**

If there is one advantage to living as long as he has, living the last several years in solitude, with disappointments he knows to be irreconcilable, it's that most other trials tend to pale in comparison. Yes, he admits it bruises him, to look across the breakfast table at Ryou's empty gaze. And of course it hurts, every time his attempts at conversation are met with a vague halting mumble, or most commonly, silence.

Those are the times he reminds himself where Ryou has come back from, and that his physical injuries are still healing. While Ryou is puzzling slowly over shirt buttons, his brother is learning to get around in a wheelchair, and his sister goes everywhere with a notepad in her pocket, while she and her family learn enough sign language to communicate. By all rights, Ryou should not be anywhere near as capable as he is.

 

A fortnight passes, becomes three weeks, a month, and any time Watanuki is tempted to feel bereft over what's missing in this young man, he clings to his recollection of that last afternoon; Ryou striding through the front entry, after finally striking the target he'd been struggling toward for years, radiant in his victory, folding his medal into Watanuki's palm.

Such a power as Watanuki had sensed then could not be simply snatched away by a single mishap, no matter how awful. It may have been deferred for a time, sent into temporary hibernation while its host rested and healed. But Watanuki can only choose to believe that having found it and claimed it, Ryou could not lose what was intrinsic to him.

Which is why, on his fifth week of convalescing in the shop, when Ryou appears to suffer a sort of relapse, seeming disinterested in leaving his bed for a day and a half, Watanuki fetches out the gold medal he's kept tucked away on his person all this time.

"You remember this?" he asks, kneeling by Ryou's futon, and ducking down into his line of sight. "You're here, but you still haven't taken this back, like you said you would."

For a moment, he sees Ryou's eyes widen and focus on the medal, tracking its slight swinging motion, dangling from the ribbon Watanuki holds. Then abruptly he closes his eyes and rolls over, showing Watanuki his back.

Ah. Avoidance. That's what this is about. Well, it's worlds better than nothing at all. Watanuki can probably work with this.

"Maybe you've decided this is too difficult," he muses aloud. He can tell by the tense set of Ryou's shoulders that he's not actually trying to sleep, and if he's not sleeping he'll be listening. "Maybe you feel it would be easier to just give up. In which case you must think I'm very troublesome, for not allowing you to. So I might as well warn you, I've nagged people far more uncooperative than yourself, for a lot longer."

There comes a soft huff from Ryou, and then he reaches up to yank at his pillow, and stick it firmly over his head, keeping it pinned there with one arm.

"You're making progress, you know," Watanuki mentions, not even bothering to hide his grin. "A few weeks ago, I'm not sure you could've done that."

"Please," says Ryou. "Stop." His voice is muffled, ragged and sad, but that is so much more feeling than he's shown since his return from the hospital. Which is why Watanuki gets up, goes to the other side of the bed and kneels again, laying his hand over Ryou's, atop his pillow.

"No," he answers softly. "I won't stop. And I won't let you stop, either. You have to be stubborn, if you're going to get better. I will drive you crazy if I have to, and I don't care if it makes you angry at me. Giving up is not an option. I won't accept it."

"No point left," Ryou mumbles under his pillow. "Not worth it."

Though his first impulse is to boil right out into a righteous argument, Watanuki makes himself pause, and consider. Ryou still has enough trouble with words, that he uses them sparingly, most often leaving Watanuki to fill in details and inferences to find what Ryou actually means to communicate.

And the more he thinks it over from Ryou's perspective, the more this mood and his words make sense.

"The way you feel, right now. I've felt that same way before," he says. "When I was your age, and I could hardly go anywhere without spirits attacking me. And later, when I worked for Yuuko-san. There was a day when I woke up, and realized I couldn't remember my parents at all."

Ryou's hand tightens under his, clenching at the pillow, and Watanuki knows he's listening hard. "I couldn't remember where I lived before this place. I didn't know what foods I liked, or what was good. I didn't know anything at all, about my life before I came here."

"You lost....your memory."

At various points over the years, Watanuki had mentioned a few of the basic facts to Ryou, though he had never explained it fully, feeling that somehow, it wasn't appropriate. Though now he sees the time has come, this story is something Ryou definitely needs to hear.

"I gave up my memories of my life, to help some people who were very important. I didn't know this at the time, because I'd even forgotten the wish and the price I'd paid. A lot of the time I was frightened, trying to get along when it felt like most of me was missing. That's when I was falling off into dreams all the time. I couldn't control anything that was happening to me. And the worst part, was how no one else could understand."

Ryou stirs slightly in his bed, shifting his arm just enough to get the pillow off his face. "What'd you do?"

Shizuka must have known, Watanuki thinks. And Haruka as well. That someday, he would need to tell this to someone. If only so that he would remember what it had been like, and that he'd found a way to live through it. Because as lonely, futile, and miserable as his life in the shop has sometimes seemed, he has actually made it through times just as difficult. The current situation was a perfect case in point.

Despite every trial he'd faced, he had eventually overcome. He'd found his footing again, and moved forward stronger than before. And now this is his lesson, to pass on to another in need.

"For awhile, I thought a lot about giving up," he answers honestly. "I didn't feel I was meant to be in the world, the way most people are. I never had a real place in it, not like you do, or anyone else you've known. It seemed to me, that the fact I existed caused a lot more trouble than I was worth." He pauses, smiling sadly, and has to sigh.

"But then several people went to a lot of trouble, to show me that it was important that I stay in the world. I wasn't sure why it mattered to them. But because they cared, eventually I knew I had to make an effort. I had to be persistent, about existing. Even when it hurt, when it seemed impossible. Even when it didn't seem worth it to me."

"What about. When other people hurt you." Now the voice under the pillow is small and miserable, and Watanuki perceives the rest of what brought this spell on. What had happened to Ryou was enough to damage anyone's trust in the human race. He had learned in one of the most shocking, awful ways possible, that the world was not as safe as he'd always made it out.

In all this time, Watanuki has never forgotten Kohane's mother, and what he and Kohane both had suffered from her. Nor has he forgotten people he's met since, who had answered their own fears and frustrations with violence against others. It had taken him quite awhile, but eventually he could appreciate those encounters, once he was able to grasp what they'd taught him.

"At those times," he tells Ryou, curling his fingers around to give his hand a squeeze, "it's especially important to be stubborn. Don't let those people stop you. Don't let them make you less than who you are. There will always be people with enough strength to hurt you, but none of them has any real power to change you. Not if you don't give it to them."

The pillow slides back a bit more, allowing Watanuki a glimpse of Ryou's nose. One downturned corner of his mouth. "They took something. My chance. I was....I wanted to tell you. And they _took_ it."

Watanuki could tell him that while his attackers might have delayed his plans, they didn't actually rob him of all opportunity. He could mention that there would be so many chances in the future, that someday Ryou will look around and see how full of choices his life truly is. But he senses that Ryou doesn't need lectures right now. He doesn't need someone telling him things he can figure out on his own. What he needs, is to know that someone holds faith in him, and knows his obstacles are not bigger than he is.

"Do you remember when we first met? You came to find me at Tango no Sekku. And I knew I was going to meet someone special. Because you sent me something, to let me know."

"You told me. That dream." Ryou sighs. "With the carp picture."

"And you remember what I asked you? If you knew the legend of the carp, who became a dragon?"

"It swam up. A waterfall. And jumped the....Dragon Gate."

"That carp didn't get to become a dragon because it picked an easy task," Watanuki tells him. "It decided to do something that others of its kind would think impossible. And I think we both know you've always had that kind of potential. So don't try to tell me now that you, of all people, would give up on all you could become, just because you've finally met the waterfall." He strokes his thumb across the sharp ridge of Ryou's knuckles, and then pushes up off his knees, stands and quietly departs for the engawa, leaving Ryou to measure his courage against his choices.

**

He's watching the fretful, rain-spattered wind tossing the treetops, throwing tiny sprays of water under the eaves, to speckle the wooden deck. A particularly insistent gust spatters his glasses, and in that moment he feels the distinct need to brew a pot of tea. Orange pekoe, with a sprinkling of anise in the leaves. He doesn't have any frosted tea cakes today, but he does have blueberry coffee cake, and that should serve just as well.

Crossing the threshold on the way back in, he encounters Ryou. Sitting in the rear parlor, watching him through the doorway. Hair mussed from bed and sticking up on one side; yukata held closed with a haphazard, clumsy knot to the obi.

For a moment, they regard each other in silence. Watanuki waiting, privately itching to comb Ryou's hair down, while Ryou struggles for the words he wants.

"If you gave up," he eventually says. "Disappeared. I wouldn't have....got to meet you."

Watanuki tips his chin in acknowledgment, and then pulls off his glasses, to wipe off the water spots. "That's true. And if you were to give up, I would lose an incredibly precious person. Someone who has made me very glad I didn't disappear, back then."

"It's hard." Ryou's shoulders drop, along with his head, as he looks down to his knees. "Everything. I don't." He blows out a harsh breath, curling his arms in around himself, and if Watanuki didn't know better, if he hadn't had this lesson driven home to him so hard, so many times, he would _wish_ there was any way he could stop this anguish, tear away to the edge of the world with it and fling it off, so it could never find Ryou again.

"What do I do?" Ryou pleads. And Watanuki isn't deaf, he isn't heartless, nor is he impervious enough to just wait here and do nothing, while someone he cherishes falls apart before his eyes.

He crosses to Ryou, bending down to offer his hand. "The first thing you do, is stand up. Here."

It takes several seconds' patience, but Ryou does look up. First at Watanuki's hand, and then at Watanuki. "Small steps," Watanuki encourages him. "All you have to do, is one thing at a time."

Tentatively at first, Ryou reaches up, takes the outstretched hand and lets Watanuki guide him to his feet. "See, that wasn't so difficult. Now let's do something about this bird's nest you have here." He finger-combs Ryou's dark hair into some semblance of order, taking care around the raw tender scar, parting his hairline over his right eye.

Ryou stands quiescent, closing his eyes when Watanuki's fingers skim his forehead, and this one quiet gesture gives Watanuki a pang. Seeing the dark fringe of Ryou's lashes, the tender sadness lingering about his mouth; it reminds him of a lone cupcake, with one blue candle pressed into the center. Or that moment, late on some winter's night, when Watanuki has looked up from a book, a drink, a pile of yarn in his lap and realizes the room has all along been silent, still as a frozen pond under a blanket of snow.

It was times such as those, when his price seemed the uttermost extremity of what he could bear. When he was so selfishly grateful that no one was around to ask him whether it was too much, if he might not wish to change his mind, after all.

He knows what's in Ryou's heart right now. He knows, because his own heart has been shaped and stretched near to breaking by the same pain. And it is for this recognition, this muted lonely echo resonating with its own slow pulse between them, that he lets his palm rest on Ryou's cheek.

Ryou's eyes open and focus on him; a question trapped in amber, the same shade that's haunted the fringes of Watanuki's life near as long as he can recall. It seems those eyes have always been before him, they've always come back to him, and he can't imagine any life without them which wouldn't be too desolate to contemplate.

He mustn't wish. He can't promise. Standing as he does upon the very fulcrum of fate, he has to mind every word, every gesture, remaining forever vigilant against upsetting the fragile balance of events.

But he is still human. And the heart within him still breaks and throbs and yearns as much as anyone else's.

Knowing this, he addresses the cautious light, barely flickering in the depths of Ryou's gaze. "A person who wishes to stay by my side needs to stand. Sometimes they will have to fight for it. They won't have the luxury of giving up."

He's thinking of Shizuka, standing in the rain for ten hours. Standing and shooting, standing and fighting, never backing down from any threat he faced. He's thinking of Haruka, standing even in the afterlife, his presence and strength unwavering.

"Is that a price?" murmurs Ryou, watching him closely now, voice barely more than a breath.  
"It's how things are," says Watanuki. "I would rather it was easier, but it never has been."

Sensing he's said all he should, he remains still, holding Ryou's gaze, feeling them both poised upon the axis point of time. A crux, around which fate and future both wait, suspended. Eye to eye. Hand to cheek. Even their chests rise and fall in barely perceptible counterpoint.

"In that case....," Ryou begins, before tensing, leaving Watanuki hanging when he blinks and glances off toward the open door. Their stilled pocket of time is broken by a quick hard gust of wind, rain spattering against the back of the shop. "Someone. Coming?"

Watanuki feels it too then, the faintest shivering at the outermost edges of the shop's boundaries, and withdraws his hand with unexpected reluctance, stepping back a pace.

"Hm. It won't be long. Why don't you go wash your face. I think you'll meet someone interesting soon."

 

*****


	17. Chapter 17

17.

 

"So you decided to live after all," says Ame-Warashi, eying Watanuki up and down under her characteristic scowl. "I heard you've been acting reckless again. Really, I thought you would've outgrown that by now."

"I apologize if I inconvenienced anyone," Watanuki answers mildly. "But I'm afraid in this case it was necessary. Would you care to enjoy some tea, while you're here? I just brewed a fresh pot."  
She gives a little twitch to the folded umbrella in her lap, while keeping him pinned with her stare. "You always offer tea when I come on business."

"I'm sorry, would you rather wine, or spirits? Now that I think of it, a bit of brandy is nice in chilly weather."  
Ame-Warashi purses her mouth at him in prim disapproval. "Drinking this early? Some of us have work to do, you know. I sincerely hope you aren't deciding to keep up _her_ intemperate habits--." She breaks off, looking sharp over his shoulder, where Watanuki knows Ryou is lingering in the doorway.

"It's all right to come out," Watanuki mentions. "I was starting to wonder if you'd--." He stops there, having turned to see that Ryou has dressed himself in trousers and a pullover, with his shoes and socks jumbled in the crook of his elbow. While Watanuki is surreptitiously checking that Ryou's sweater isn't wrong side out, Ryou himself offers a tentative bow toward Ame-Warashi.

"Sorry. You had to wait. That's....a pretty umbrella."

At this point, Watanuki has to leave off speculating about what exactly had compelled Ryou to get dressed, in order to appreciate the sight of Ame-Warashi looking utterly nonplussed, for the first time in his recollection.

"Ryou-san, please come and meet my important and esteemed acquaintance, Ame-Warashi," he offers. "Here's a seat for you. If you'll excuse me, I was just about to fetch the tea." Taking advantage of their guest's momentary bafflement, he rises up and slips past Ryou, toward the kitchen. He knows to wait until he's well out of Ame-Warashi's sight, before allowing himself the smallest grin.

**

"...that sakura in your courtyard is doing well, but the hinoki along the east wall aren't getting adequate drainage. If you don't want them to blight, you should fix that before summer." When Watanuki returns with the tea tray, Ame-Warashi is evidently lecturing Ryou about the state of the flora around his family's temple.

"Hm," answers Ryou.

"And make sure you take special care with that bamboo tree of yours," she tells him, sparing a warning glance at Watanuki. "Since there's a cutting from it growing here. It could be very troublesome, if something exploited the connection between those trees."

"That was a cutting from your tree?" Watanuki asks Ryou, who nods. He doesn't offer anything further, and suspecting Ryou may be approaching his limit on conversation for the day, Watanuki decides to save further questions for another time. Instead, he pours out tea for the three of them and cuts the blueberry coffee cake.

"I hope you and Zashiki-Warashi have been well?" he asks Ame-Warashi, who sniffs at her tea, as though she suspects him of having spiked it.

"As well as can be expected. Though I think it's time to replace her household wards." She stops there for a cautious sip of tea, and glances to her cake plate. "Anise with blueberries. You have unusual tastes."

Which Watanuki knows is as close to a compliment as she is ever likely to give. "I hadn't realized Zashiki-Warashi used ofuda at her home. Though of course it makes sense. Shall I make some for you to take back?"

"They can last a long time on the mountain," answers Ame-Warashi. "But they have to be drawn there, or they're no good. The last person who made them, was this person's ancestor," nodding toward Ryou, who--to Watanuki's startlement--tips his chin down in agreement.

"You mean. Haruka-san....went to Zashiki-Warashi's home?"  
"He was useful and attentive, for a human," says Ame-Warashi. "He did a few favors for us, in exchange for knowledge."

Which shouldn't be at all surprising, Watanuki thinks. After all, Haruka hadn't acquired his considerable knowledge from nowhere. According to his great-granddaughter's studies, the man had spent his whole life in pursuit of learning. And considering his talents, it was only natural that his quest might have led him to places outside the everyday world.

Watanuki has about ten seconds to be intrigued over this, before he registers the implications hanging unspoken in the sudden quiet, and the speculative eye Ame-Warashi is currently giving Ryou.

Of course his first impulse is immediate, vehement refusal. No, she may _not_ drag Ryou off across worlds for an errand he himself cannot supervise. Watanuki is not Yuuko, he has a deeply vested interest in his friends staying in one piece, and no intention of subjecting Ryou to Ame-Warashi's unpredictable humors, or the wicked sting of her umbrella, any time soon.

But then he realizes Ryou is looking to him, with more genuine interest than he's shown toward anything in several weeks. "Is that. Something I could do?"

And what can he say? After challenging Ryou to stand, persist, and overcome, he can hardly change his tune at the first opportunity. Thinking to buy himself a moment, he turns a level look on Ame-Warashi. "When were you wishing to renew these wards?" Placing some emphasis on the word _wish_ , to warn her that what she seeks will not necessarily come cheap.

"Tomorrow at sunrise is the most auspicious time to start," she tells him. "But there are preparations first."

Ryou sets down his teacup and takes up one sock, and while his motivation is certainly laudable, Watanuki wishes to make a few things very clear to their guest first. "I'm sorry. Ryou, could I ask you to go in and find Mugetsu, please?"

**

"I need to borrow your apprentice and Kudakitsune," Ame-Warashi states flatly. "And don't make that face, or I'll be cross with you. I already know what happened with him, and I _told_ you there would be trouble, didn't I?"

Watanuki surrenders his composure as a lost cause and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "It isn't that I object to him helping you. But if you know what's happened to him, then surely you understand this is not the best time." Too well he remembers the rigors of the trip to that realm, getting dumped in freezing ponds and wells, and most of all the sting of Ame-Warashi's umbrella, when she felt his attention had strayed. These are among the last things he intends to subject Ryou to anytime soon.

"A trip to the mountain will do him good," she forges on. "And I hope you aren't implying it isn't every bit as safe as this shop. If not moreso."

"I'm not questioning the safety of the place. What I need you to understand is that Ryou is still recovering from grave injury, and he is much more fragile than you or I. So much as a bump to the head could do him serious, permanent harm."

For a moment Ame-Warashi glares stubbornly back at him, probably weighing the merits of giving _him_ a knock to the skull. Generally speaking, Watanuki has always gone out of his way to avoid seeing her in such a mood, but in this case it isn't his skull he's concerned about, it's Ryou's, and for his sake Watanuki will not back down. He meets her glare implacably, until most of her thunder eases off and she merely huffs her irritation at him.

"I suppose I'll be forced to escort him there myself, then."  
"And back."

"Are you presuming to give _me_ orders, Shopkeeper?"  
"I'm offering you my terms, Ame-Warashi-sama. Ryou is not a slave, or a pet, or an errand boy. His family have entrusted him to my care. If I'm to extend that trust to you, I have to be convinced you will take every precaution for his safety, just as I would."

The more rational part of him makes him add, in a gentler tone, "Just as you have cared for Zashiki-Warashi's safety."

All at once, her demeanor shifts. It's not that his words soften her, precisely. But that combative set to her jaw relaxes, and the way she studies him suggests she's actually seeing him, for the first time.  
"You must realize," she tells him quietly, "that you cannot be his sole protection. Not if you would see him come into his strength. The strength of his ancestor."

Of course Watanuki had long suspected, he had even dared to hope, but this is the first time he's had an outside party so clearly confirm it. "You see that in him? Haruka-san's strength?"

For answer he gets a dismissive hand-flick. "You're the one watching human destinies all the time, and you're asking me?"  
But then Ryou sidles out, with Mugetsu practically adhered to his leg, and Watanuki sees it in the way her eyes shift toward him. Expectancy. A species of recognition. She knows Ryou's potential. And more importantly, it dawns on him, she wants to see it realized.

Meanwhile, Ryou is watching him, with his own expectancy. "So. Can I go?"

Briefly, Watanuki wonders if this anxiety he feels welling up is anything like how parents feel, seeing their only child off for the first day of school. Although taking their own relationship into consideration, the comparison is probably inappropriate. For one thing, people don't look at their parents the way Ryou was looking at him in the rear parlor, earlier.

"I don't expect it will be an easy trip," he tells Ryou. "Are you sure you feel up to it?"  
Ryou looks between him and Ame-Warashi. He looks out toward the lawn, the hedge, and then up to the clear blue sky; as much as can be seen between the surrounding high-rises, anyway.

"I want. I want to try," he answers.

 

**

 

"Do you ever think about where you'll go, when you leave here?"

"You mean _if_ I left here," Watanuki corrects, setting out the bowls, utensils, cups and napkins on the dinner table, and then eying the table distractedly. "What am I forgetting? Ah, soup!"

He hurries to the kitchen for the soup tureen, and then rushes back to where Ryou sits, still gazing off distantly toward the rear doors, where they can just hear the wind outside, shoving through with winter's first true cold front.

Once he deems the table set, Watanuki can address the question. "I imagine I'd want to visit a decent grocery, for starters," sending Ryou a stern look, which goes wholly unnoticed. "I still don't know how you confuse kabocha for konnyaku."

"I didn't," Ryou answers mildly. "With the cold coming, I thought kabocha would be better. I forgot to call and tell you. Sorry."  
"And now you see what happens, when you spring last-minute substitutions on the cook. Dinner is late."

"But it smells delicious." Ryou finally turns his attention from the door to the table, taking in the dishes, and the side-dishes, and then raising his eyes to Watanuki, with the smallest satisfied smile.

At which point all Watanuki can do is forgive him. For even now, he can never catch one of Ryou's rare smiles without remembering all those somber months; nearly a year after his accident, when Ryou didn't smile at all.

"Well. You did choose a good wine to go with it. What did you say it was called?"  
"Viognier," answers Ryou. "One of the parishioners brought some bottles to Kiyoshi, back during....um. Obon, I'm pretty sure. I remembered it when I found the kabocha." Abruptly, he glances at the wine carafe, in the center of the table. "Oh. Right, that's why I forgot to call you."

By now, Watanuki and the Doumeki family have all grown accustomed to Ryou's lapses of short-term memory. Along with his remote quiet spells, his unorthodox concept of time, his benevolent disregard for things like grocery lists, or schedules, or putting on matching socks. It seemed that while he had gained in terms of some esoteric talents in recent years, he had unfortunately lost some of the more practical faculties.

Three and a half years ago, Ryou had returned from Zashiki-Warashi's home with the discovery that he could create astoundingly effective calligraphy for ofuda and omamori. Only for him to learn soon after, that he could barely comprehend the paragraphs in a newspaper. To this day he struggles over basic mathematical sums, addresses and phone numbers. And yet if Watanuki should request any item in the shop, including the notoriously temperamental storeroom, Ryou will locate the object effortlessly, within moments. He does the same around the temple as well.

His mother had once ventured to ask Watanuki, in private, whether this might be related somehow, to the sort of exchanges the shop specialized in. While Watanuki could understand the reasoning which prompted her question, he made it explicitly clear to Haruka-chan that he would _never_ , under any circumstances have accepted such a price from Ryou. As it was, he had been crushed when it became clear that Ryou would not graduate with his high school class, nor take his college entrance exams.

Instead, he would spend countless hours with private tutors, learning specialists, and various therapists, so that he might learn to read again. Or use a city map, or pay cash for something in a store. Three and a half years of daily study, drills and practice, quizzes and neverending support from his family, his teachers, and Watanuki. And now on his better days, Ryou--who had been near the top of his high school class at sixteen--can almost pass for functionally literate.

There are times Watanuki is tempted by despondency at having failed Ryou. Even knowing the limits of what the Shopkeeper can grant, knowing that he had done all he was able at the time, knowing it was impossible for him to have foreseen what only the winding course of human events could reveal. Ever since Ryou had been a child, isolated by his rare insight, his strong inborn purpose, Watanuki had wanted more than anything to see him experience the world fully. To grow in knowledge, to discover places and people, and live a rich, engaging life, in spite of his difference.

In short, Watanuki had wanted him to grow up free, in all the ways Watanuki himself was not. And in ways his great-grandfather Shizuka hadn't been; having leashed himself to the shop, from the day Watanuki had taken up confinement within it, until the last day of his life.

It does not help a great deal, that on his solemn, quiet days of late, Ryou looks so much like Shizuka that it sometimes hurts.

 

*****


	18. Chapter 18

18.

 

It's hot. Stupidly hot for October, and all afternoon Watanuki has been fanning himself with a folded newspaper, peeling his samue away from his chest, his shoulders, languishing by the hall door, well away from any windows, waiting, with increasing snappishness, for the sun to go down.

But the day malingers like some eternal torment of the afterlife, and he pours glasses of iced tea, and pulls out his knitting basket just to kill time. He knits and picks and the needles slip in his sweaty palms, and he swears and sweats more.

Then it's orange dusk, still hot as the blazes, airless, and Ryou wanders in like a dark stormcloud crossing a far horizon, muttering a greeting on his way to the kitchen. Watanuki mutters something back, and then drops a bunch of stitches, knots his yarn again and curses the air blue.

"What happened to the stepladder?" Ryou asks on his way back from the kitchen, passing straight to the rear door and frowning out at the thick stillness of the back garden.  
"Loaned it to the oden-stand fox," Watanuki answers, working at one knot with his fingers. "You need it?"

"It would help," Ryou says, before stalking from the room.

"I don't guess you'd care to explain that." Watanuki stares briefly through the doorway Ryou just took, but apparently he's out of earshot. So he resumes grinding his teeth over the yarn.

A few minutes later, Ryou cruises back through, purposeful and utterly inscrutable. "Have you seen Grandfather Shizuka's peach-wood thimble?"  
Watanuki twitches and drops another stitch. "Not in the last fifty years or so. It's at the temple, somewhere."

"Not anymore."  
"What are you talking about?" Dropping the knitting needles before he snaps them over his knee, Watanuki stares up at Ryou. "Your mother told me, it's in the family safe."

"Not when I looked yesterday. I think it came to your storeroom. So I'm going to look."  
"I thought you were helping Kiyoshi clean the sanctuary, tonight."

Ryou pauses, gives him a long, penetrating stare back. "We got done earlier."  
Then before Watanuki can beg any real explanation, he turns on his heel, heading for the rear doorway.

"Don't spill your drink," he mentions, crossing the threshold.

"My drink? What?" Watanuki gives up and growls in exasperation. Normally he's fine with Ryou's cryptic humors and abrupt non-sequiturs; under ordinary circumstances he has nothing but patience for the young man. But it is too damned hot for deciphering mysteries, and his teeth have been on edge all day as it is, and dear _god_ won't the sun ever go down?

"Hello? Beg pardon for barging in like this." At the voice in the foyer, which he hadn't remotely anticipated, Watanuki starts up to his knees, and promptly knocks over his tea glass.

"Damn, damn-all, dammit." He scrambles for a hand towel and flings it over the mess before it can run off the table and stain the rug. Toward the foyer, he calls, "Sorry, I'll just be a moment."

Seconds later, he's hurrying to greet the visitor, all too aware of his overheated, bedraggled state, made even more embarrassing when he sees the man out front, elegantly turned out in a fine dark three-piece suit.

Watanuki feels hotter just looking at those clothes, but the gentleman himself doesn't appear the least troubled by the weather. He just smiles pleasantly at Watanuki, giving a polite nod, and a, "Good evening, how do you do?"

"Very well, thank you," Watanuki lies automatically, pasting on a pleasant smile in return. "How may I help you?"

"I understand this is the shop that grants wishes." The man's reply is prompt and crisp as the pleats in his trousers. "I have come to see whether my wish can be granted."  
"If it's something I can grant, and you can pay the price," Watanuki recites, as he has so many, many times, "then yes. Please come in."

He brings the visitor to the sunroom in front, where it's stifling, and offers a cool drink, but the man politely declines. Then comes his request; a curious one, in that Watanuki has trouble seeing why the man would have brought it to _him_.

The wish is for a house. Nothing extraordinary, not a house unobtainable by normal means. Just an average house, in a quiet neighborhood in the city. Briefly, the man explains about a business deal gone bad years ago, how it ruined his credit, and made it impossible to get loan approval. He's been working conscientiously ever since to rebuild his credit, but in the meantime there is just this one thing he wants, very much.

It's a clear, simple story. And yet something about it doesn't work. Maybe because Watanuki is distracted by the sweat rolling down his sides. Wondering what Ryou is getting up to out in the storeroom. Whether the tea he'd spilled is seeping out from that hand towel and over the table edge, yet.

For whatever reason, for the first time in quite a long age, Watanuki cannot grasp what ought to be second nature to him. That balance point. That subtle, ineffable certainty of what the customer's wish will cost them. He puts forth a few questions, trying to ascertain what this desire means to his visitor, where in his heart does it weigh. The man returns straightforward answers which illuminate nothing.

"Are you certain that it's a house you wish for?" he asks, trying to look past the man's perfectly ordinary features, his tidy clothing, his utterly unmemorable eyes.

....Wait a minute.

"Absolutely certain," the man is saying. "I've had it picked out for some while. I even came here with my payment all prepared, here let me show--."

"Don't open that. Put your hands down and don't move."

In the midst of withdrawing a small drawstring bag from his coat pocket, the man freezes, as Watanuki spins about to see Ryou striding in, holding the yumi from Shizuka's peach-wood ring.

"Where did you come from?" the visitor asks, and then it's Watanuki's turn.  
"What are you _doing_?"

"That wish can't be granted," says Ryou, already raising and drawing apart the yumi, as all the air in the room begins to hum, a deep sonorous note that vibrates its way through Watanuki's back teeth.

"Wait, if I could just show the Shopkeeper--."  
Ryou cuts the visitor off sharply. "You don't belong here."

"Ryou!" Watanuki glances to the man, thinking to warn him, urge him to escape, but then he sees the bottomless black eyes; the mask he'd taken for a human face, and that drawstring bag is moving, dear god it's pulsing like a disembodied heart, and all Watanuki needs to know can be summed up in a single word.

Danger.

"Move!" Ryou's shout jolts Watanuki sideways from his chair, just before he's slammed to the floor by the shockwave of the passing arrow. The visitor's bellow jumps to an unearthly shriek at ear-bleeding pitch, and then the room explodes in white light.

**

"When I left the temple, it was late. Around midnight. But when I came in the gate, the sun hadn't even set." Ryou puts a glass in Watanuki's hand and he swallows from it automatically, recognizing the burn of brandy after the fact.

"What. Was that. Why did I let it in." There's something not right with Watanuki's voice, he's all a mess of split seams and busted hinges, and he can't take his eyes off the cool dark of the night sky overhead.

"It's Kannazuki now," comes Ryou's quiet answer. "And all the gods have gone to Izumo."

"The house it wanted was the shop. It meant to trick me, with the payment." Would he even have realized, if Ryou hadn't intervened? Would he be dead now, or prisoner to a demon? How, after all this time, could he not have known better? Why had he failed to _see_?

"The house it wanted was you."

Watanuki shudders, draws his knees up to his chest, and Ryou gently pulls the empty glass from his grip.  
"I'll make you all new wards, tonight. This place needs extra protection, right now."

After some while, Watanuki feels he wants a smoke. But he doesn't want to get up from the porch. At some point soon he needs to work out what he'll pay for Ryou stepping in and saving him. But right now, he doesn't trust his inward senses for anything.

"I should have known something was wrong, when the sun wasn't going down. I thought it was just the heat, making the day seem too long."

Ryou looks up from his hands, clasped between his knees. He's turned toward Watanuki; half his face softly outlined by the light falling from the open door, the other half in shadow. "You told me this shop isn't really in the city."

"Yes?"  
"So. If you stayed here long enough, and never went back out there. Then this place would stop following the rules of the world out there."

"Rules like time," Watanuki concludes, and sees Ryou shrug.  
"It's like a boat. If you tie it to the shore, it stays. If it's not tied, then it drifts away."

Every time Watanuki closes his eyes for more than a second, he sees Ryou striding into the sunroom, gripping the yumi. In that first split instant, it had kicked him square in the chest; _Shizuka_ , with his eyes glittering like a blade edge, filling the doorway; terrible, remorseless, and untouchable as a force of nature.

But Shizuka had never been vulnerable like this. His eyes had never revealed the truth that resonates in Watanuki's own heart: that the deepest wisdom of life is most often earned through sorrow and sacrifice. He had never looked at Watanuki, the way Ryou is looking at him now, as one learning an epitaph by heart. _One day I will lose you, but I'll always be yours._

"Why do you say it's like a boat?" he finally asks, because dwelling on epitaphs and eternity does neither of them any good right now.

"I dreamed you were on a boat, drifting into a fog. And I couldn't reach you. That's why I came here."

Watanuki wants to apologize, feels strongly that he ought to. But for what? _I'm sorry I chose to stay here, before even your grandfather was born. I'm sorry I slipped and let a hijacker in. I'm sorry our lives are so twisted together that one of us getting lost would tear the other in half._

Eventually he settles for, "Thank you. For knowing what to do. And not hesitating." Because no amount of apology will change the past, nor alter the terms of the present. The best they can do is acknowledge the facts before them, making their choices accordingly.

They sit out until the dew falls, and the pre-dawn chill raises goosebumps on Watanuki's arms. The first gray light is barely a scent on the air, when Watanuki pushes up, wanders stiffly inside to wash and put on something he can sleep in.

When he enters his bedroom, rubbing at one grainy tired eye, he sees Ryou has set up a writing desk not far from his bed, with a single candle for light.

"You shouldn't work in the dark like that," he admonishes vaguely through a wide yawn, all but collapsing onto his futon.

"Sun's coming up," Ryou answers, testing the tip of a calligraphy brush between his fingers. "And I don't need to see with my eyes, for this."

Which is true enough in his case, and it's not as though Watanuki wants to see him depart to another room, even if it does have proper light.

"Have it your way. If you're blind by the time you're thirty, you'll have no one but yourself to blame."

If nothing else, he has the comfort of knowing Ryou understands. That he can't ask for company while he sleeps, because he owes for too much tonight already. He can't admit that if he lays here by himself, all he will think of is riding adrift in an oarless boat, gray waves lapping at the stern, while the shoreline dissolves away into fog.

Instead, thanks to Ryou's quiet obstinacy, he is free to sink his head into the pillow and think nothing for awhile. To let himself drift toward safer waters; deep sleep free of any dreams or portents.

 

He is just on the edge of that sleep, sliding down into welcome fuzzy darkness, when Ryou's last words of the night reach him.

"Even if I were blind. I wouldn't let you go away."

 

**

 

Following the attempted theft of the shop, Watanuki takes to keeping a calendar in the kitchen again.

Back when he had more people to keep track of, he used to hang one on the wall adjacent to the refrigerator, and mark down anniversaries, graduations, and similar occasions of interest. Of course once practically everyone he knew passed on, there were far fewer events to commemorate; the odd written note by the phone served just as well, and he'd never needed to write down seasonal observances, or dates important to the second world.

This time when he hangs a calendar though, it isn't for marking out future dates. It's so he can keep himself attuned to days in the world outside the shop. An extra safety tether, to keep him from drifting too far from the shore. Every day, he goes to the kitchen and crosses off a Monday or a Thursday, notes that it's September in the outside world, and that the weather in the shop's immediate vicinity is behaving appropriately.

The experiment serves its purpose well, for a time, but then Watanuki starts to realize that keeping time with a stationery store calendar is illuminating in ways he doesn't quite understand.

"You know, I wish I'd thought to do this years ago. Then I could compare." He's just counted off thirteen days left in November, flipping up the page to see that December will have thirty-one days, just as it has since long before he was born. It's been so long since he bothered to notice how man-made calendars work, that the whole concept seems novel again.

The rustling of Ryou's inspection of the pantry pauses. "Compare what?"

"There was this strange thing, quite awhile ago. Back around the time I first met your mother. It seemed for years like it was always summer. I know it was winter the day I met her. But everything else I remember, happened in summer. I don't know, it never really made sense."

Slowly, Ryou emerges from behind the pantry door.  
"If you're looking for the senbei, they're on the second shelf from the top." Watanuki lets the November page drop, thinking to let the minor seasonal oddity drop as well, in favor of more practical matters, such as dinner.

But then Ryou is wandering over to his side, to study the crossed-out days on the calendar. "And now?"  
Watanuki has to blink up at him. "What about now?"

Ryou reaches for the calendar, lowering the November page to see the month previous. He scans over September's marked days, with a growing thoughtful frown. "You said back then, it always used to seem like summer."

"Yeah, for awhile. Just one of those things, I guess. Perception."

Turning back another page, Ryou looks carefully over August. Trailing one finger down those crossed-out squares, he stops on a Thursday. "Do you know what we did, on this day?"

Watanuki opens his mouth to answer, Of course. But then discovers that past the immediate assumption, there's nothing. He has to think.  
"Didn't I paint a bunch of paper lanterns, that week?"

"That was this month. Two years ago."  
"Oh. Was it really? Well what about....oh I know, I was making you a new scarf."

"Last year. October."

"That can't--are you sure?"

Ryou turns the calendar pages forward to November again, and lowers his hands to his sides. Otherwise he does not move, aside from a careful-sounding breath.

"Do you remember what happened in April?"

Watanuki's memory is a fluttering cascade of impressions; preparing meals, choosing clothes for warmth or coolness, putting away the new strawberry wine, raking vivid crimson maple leaves in the side yard. He sifts and sorts, carefully this time; surely he can give the right answer if he tries.

April. Rain showers and bright new grass. Spring cleaning, cooking with the tenderest fresh greens. Standing eye-to-eye with Ryou in the rear parlor, touching his bed-tousled hair....

"I remember. Ah...." He trails off in confusion. No, that can't be right. He can see for himself, glancing at the top of Ryou's jawline, that they haven't stood eye-to-eye in awhile. What he's remembering is that time after Ryou was hurt. And the rational part of him knows that can't have been _this_ April. But press as he might, it's all he has to go on.

He tries to recall May, March, and June, but they're all peppered with recollections of an even younger Ryou. A solemn child just starting school. A young man with blazing amber eyes, in the epiphany of his purpose. A boy sharing an afternoon picnic, and the nostalgic pang of sugary sodas.

But that's as far as it goes. He finds no memory concurrent to earlier this year, with this man who had grown up somewhere in the time of the falling leaves, into a broader, taller frame, and the deep, resonant strength of voice that people tend to listen to without question.

And now that he thinks of it, when did that really happen? When did Ryou grow up? Would it be more real to say it was over the course of some arbitrary number of years, the way paper calendars from stationery shops measure it? Was Watanuki's memory, tied to time within the shop and his own frozen internal hourglass, a trustworthy guide anymore?

"I don't remember this year's April," he eventually admits. And then turns from the calendar, because it's starting to unsettle his stomach. "I'm sorry, if I forgot something important."

He heads over to close the pantry door, feeling dazed. Notes with a glance, that the senbei actually is where he'd expected it. Though for all he knows, Ryou might have been replacing new packages, in that same spot, for years.

Which is not a particularly comfortable thought, at all.

"Did I forget something important?" He turns back to Ryou, who's no longer looking at the calendar, so much as seeking past it, to someplace else.

The question hangs in the air between them, long enough that Watanuki starts to feel anxious. Worried that he might have neglected a promise, or inadvertently discarded something of value to Ryou, like tossing a treasured keepsake out with the trash.

Although when Ryou eventually turns to him, there is no reproach, no hurt feelings in evidence. Just concern and curiosity, neither of which are terribly rare.  
"I guess not," he answers.

"Are you sure?" Having acknowledged the possibility, he finds he can't bear the thought of having wronged Ryou, unknowingly. If he did, he must make prompt amends, and be sure the mistake won't be repeated.

But Ryou prefers to keep his own council on the matter, giving the classic Doumeki half-shrug, and putting his hands in his pockets.   
"If I go get chestnuts, would you make kurigohan?"

After a second, Watanuki finds himself nodding, recognizing that Ryou prefers to leave the discussion alone for now. Requesting chestnuts for autumn, and a traditional home-cooked meal for comfort. Rather than picking apart the anomaly between them, he's seeking ground they can both agree on. And who's to say that isn't the wiser course, for now?

"Pick up some matsutake too, and some sanma," he answers. "We can grill outside for dinner."

 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, the deal with [Kannazuki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar#Common_names). When I first read reference to it, Kannazuki was mentioned as "the month of no gods", in the old Japanese calendar. Tradition and legend had it, that in the tenth month (going by the Chinese luni-solar calendar), all the gods hied off to Izumo to plan the fortunes of humans for the coming year (while slacking around at ramen carts, if you believe [The Tatami Galaxy](http://www.hulu.com/the-tatami-galaxy)). However I discovered the wiki article linked above points out some linguistic hair-splitting; to wit, that the kanji in Kannazuki are actually meant to be read "month of gods". Since from the point of view of everyone in Izumo, all the gods are present and accounted for in one spot. (Except Ebisu, as I seem to recall for some reason.) Wiki says the correct term for "month without gods" would be "kaminakizuki".
> 
> I'm not sure why the one prefecture where the gods come to roost gets to name the month for the rest of the country, who are all going godless then. But whatever, I don't make the rules. Personally, I prefer the possibilities in a month of no gods, and that's what Ryou is implying here.


	19. Chapter 19

19.

 

The night is dark and crisp; sky scattered with bright stars, and the chilly air threaded with the musk of crumbled orange leaves, distant woodsmoke, and the dry sharp scent of snow. Watanuki had stepped out just to briefly note this early foretaste of winter, but then after watching the stars sparkle for a few moments, he chooses to bundle up, pour himself a good drink or three, and enjoy the night air awhile.

He decides it's time to open that bottle of Shouwa-era sake which had been putting itself in his way lately, here and there. And since company frequently manages to drop by when he opens a bottle of something rare, he brings out a couple of extra cups as well.

A brilliant sickle moon gradually rises, drenching the back lawn in silver, and shimmering in his sake cup. It's not quite cold enough to see his breath, but the tantalizing frosty tang on the air says that deep wintry chill isn't far off. In the meantime, his drink and layered clothes are just enough to keep him this side of comfortable.

 

"Ah. I'm sorry, didn't mean to trespass."

One moment he's alone, and the next there is this visitor, emerging from the thick inky shadows beneath the gingko tree. An elderly man with a kindly--if rather confused--countenance, wearing a padded winter kimono of dark silk, with an elaborate old-fashioned haori layered over it.

Unaccountably, he's carrying a twig-bristle broom in one hand, and briefly holds it up for a puzzled inspection. "Sorry," he repeats. "But I believe....someone instructed me to bring this here?"

The man is a human spirit, though he may not yet know it. Watanuki was aware of his nature the moment he brushed against the shop's outer boundaries, and sensing no harm in him, permitted him to cross within.

This business of the broom however, was not expected, and so Watanuki asks cautiously, " _Who_ told you to bring that in here?"

"Well. See, that's what's strange." The old fellow rubs the back of his neck, with a gentle sheepish look. "It was my father. Just a little while ago." He blinks around the garden, blinks at Watanuki, and then gives a polite, if belated, bow. "Beg pardon. Not quite sure how I got here, to be honest."

 _My father._

Without a second thought, Watanuki is up and rushing for the gingko tree, searching every shadow on high alert, reaching out with all his senses, breath coming short and fast. "Is he here? Did he come with you?"

"He said he couldn't." The man shakes his head slowly, with a lonesome sadness that brings Watanuki to a whirling halt, his flash of startled mad hope instantly doused. "I only got to see him for a moment. Then he went off, and I was here."

"Oh. Oh I'm sorry, Daisuke-san." Because what other spirit would this be, showing up in his side yard with a temple broom, now?

Now that he's close enough, Watanuki can even place that haori he's wearing; an old Doumeki family heirloom which Ryou had brought by months ago, in hopes Watanuki might be able to repair the embroidery. Explaining that his grandfather had been fond of it, and was feeling poorly of late, and Ryou was looking for something to cheer him up.

The old man blinks, and focuses properly on him now, taking him in from head to toe, with widening eyes. "Well. My heavens, is it really--." Then all at once, he's bowing, deep and repeatedly. "Oh, please forgive my terrible manners, sir."

"No, it's fine--." Watanuki attempts.  
"--I had no idea, sir, I never--"  
"--really, you don't have to--"  
"--most humbly beg your pardon for intruding--"

"Daisuke-san. Wait." Watanuki catches the poor fellow's elbow before he works himself into a nervous fit, and offers him a smile, hoping to put him at ease. "My shop is always open to your family, please don't feel you're intruding. Truly, I am happy to see you here."

The old man looks up at him uncertainly, and for whatever reason--the angle, the expression--Watanuki is smitten by sudden recognition.  
"Gracious, you have your mother's eyes. I never knew that."

"I--. Thank you, sir."

"Here, that won't do." Watanuki puts some warmth into his smile, patting Daisuke's back and then resting his hand on one frail bent shoulder. "You're the only son of two of my dearest friends. You've done me so much kindness, and though we've never spoken, I've always thought highly of you. Please won't you call me by name, as friends should?"

"Er. Well, if it's--. Of course, Watanuki-sama."  
"That's fine," Watanuki nods agreeably. "Now if you don't have to be going anywhere, I'd just opened up this sake for tonight. It's nothing too special, but if you didn't mind, I would be very pleased to share it with you."

"Well...." Daisuke peers into the darkness back over his shoulder a moment, then glances toward the engawa, bathed in warm light from the rear doorway. "I don't suppose I do have anyplace to be, just now. And. Well, a drink doesn't sound like a bad idea."

**

"Y'know. I have to say, I never quite pictured the afterlife being like this."

Half through the sake, Daisuke had discovered a hand-rolled cigarette in his sleeve, which Watanuki had lit for him, before lighting Yuuko's kiseru. Now they sit on the engawa, smoking and sipping at their drinks, and though the old man hasn't entirely lost his air of mild bafflement, it seems he's managed to relax enough.

"I expect it's different for everyone," Watanuki answers. "Though I'm not sure you're properly in the afterlife, just yet."

"You mean I'm....one of those earthbound spirits?" Daisuke tips his head, and looks down at himself thoughtfully, for a moment. "Odd. Seems like I should be more worried about that. But I'm not worried."

"I don't expect you have any reason to be. Not everyone moves on in the same way, I've noticed."

In the course of drawing on his cigarette, Daisuke nods along. "Hm." Then he gazes on the slim cylinder between his fingers, watching the glowing ember, the rising smoke curl.

"Gave these up, back when my daughter was born, y'know. Missed 'em like the dickens too, every so often." He gives a chuckle, and shakes his head. "Maybe this is a reward for a virtuous life, hm?"

Watanuki smiles indulgently, and tops off their drinks. "If that's the case, your great-grandfather Haruka-san must have been a living saint. He was rewarded abundantly, as I remember."

When Daisuke turns a sidelong grin at him, squinting one eye through the smoke, Watanuki can almost see the resemblance. Behind the seams and creases of age, his smile is much like Haruka's. But more prevalent, is the warmth that reminds him strongly of Kohane's innocent sweetness. "Does he still visit here, Grandfather Haruka?"

"Not since your father passed. I've often wondered, whether they've been visiting each other, since then."  
Daisuke's brows go up a fraction. "You mean, you really don't know?"

Now it's Watanuki's turn to chuckle. "I'm not omniscient, Daisuke-san. I still only know the things I have a need to know." A few of his recent shortcomings spring to mind, and sober him a bit. "And sometimes fate puts a stricter definition on 'need' than I would like."

"Ah, well. Sounds a bit like the wisdom of old age, then. Not always what you'd prefer it to be."

Daisuke takes up his cup, savoring his drink in a slow, solemn manner, before going on. "I've wished for quite awhile I'd known more what to do for the family. I always tried to carry on as my father would've wanted. But I never knew how easy things had gone for me, 'til it came time for the youngsters to take over. I don't mind saying they hit a hell of a rough patch, there, for awhile. Got so's I'd lay awake nights, trying to think what in the world I could offer them. Worried over it right up 'til the end."

He sighs, and in the droop of his shoulders, Watanuki sees the full burden of an old man's life at its close. Right here, is all the frailty and sorrow of the human condition, drawing every moment more distant from the hopeful possibilities that every new day once brought.

He tells himself to take a long look, lock it in his heart and never forget, that this too is what it means to be human.

"So now I'm gone," murmurs Daisuke. "From here out, it's all up to them."

"I know you've done your best. Your mother and father would both be proud." Watanuki tells him. "Even though you could never come here, you managed to help me for years. You raised your daughter to be strong and honorable, and you supported her, even when she made difficult choices. And Haruka-chan has passed on all that you gave her to her children, as well."

"Don't give me too much credit." Daisuke gives him a wry, one-sided smile. "I know a lot of our fortune is thanks to you. Who else could've put my daughter and grandson on the right track? No one understood Ryou-kun as well as you. And even the price you took to keep him with us, it's tied them all closer together. Losing him back then, would've torn the whole family to pieces."

"That's very generous of you to say," Watanuki answers quietly, knowing he may never entirely make peace with that catastrophe, no matter how long he lives.

Although in recent years, the Doumeki family's future prospects seem to have stabilized, the change in their fortunes is very much in evidence. From the reconstruction of the temple and grounds to accommodate Kiyoshi's wheelchair ramps, to the alteration in family tradition which allowed for joint management of the temple by Ryou's siblings. Together, Kiyoshi and Shiori were learning to take over the practical and administrative duties from their parents, while Ryou, with his more esoteric talents, served as a consultant on occasion.

Watanuki no longer contemplates his portion of blame for the changes in such exacting detail as he once did. But he keenly understands the doubts Daisuke had taken with him at the end, and the lingering aftertaste of regret is no stranger to him.

"I suppose no matter how much we do, or how much we know, there will always be times when it doesn't seem enough," he sighs.

"I believe you're right." Daisuke watches the glowing tip of his cigarette thoughtfully, before taking a long drag, and exhaling. "You must have seen quite a lot, in your time."

"Not much of the world you knew," Watanuki admits. "But I've seen all kinds of people." And so much of the desires and yearnings of the world, reflected in the hearts of those who find their way to him, he thinks.

"With you, and this place, all unchanging," murmurs Daisuke. "Y'know I realized some while ago, that thing people say--the more things change the more they stay the same. It really is true, after a fashion. Do you find it true, where you stand?"

"The things people want don't seem to change. Not much. Other than that, I'm afraid I can't say." Watanuki is about to tip his cup to his lips, when another thought pauses him. "And I might be losing perspective, anyway."

"Oh?" Daisuke turns an inquiring look on him, and Watanuki realizes his offhand comment was more of a confession he's had on his mind, with no ear to deliver it to. None who would understand what great longevity is like from the inside, at any rate.

"I'm not sure if I can explain it," he shrugs, then swallows from his drink and decides to try anyway. "I keep this calendar, in the kitchen. I know I mark off every day of every month. I talk to people every season of the year, and I'm sure I still keep the seasonal observances. But I've only been remembering one season at a time, for three or four years. Like right now, it's late autumn. And all I remember is late autumn, going back....well, four years now, I guess. It doesn't seem that long to me. But if I look back in the calendars, I haven't remembered any winters in quite a long time."

"Hmm," Daisuke nods along, creasing his brow in deep thought. "I'd noticed days and years going faster all the time, as I got older. One day my son's going into high school, and next thing I know my daughter's having children of her own. Whish!" Snapping his fingers for emphasis, "Just like that. There I am looking around, wondering where all that time went."

"Yes. I remember that, too. After....after Shizuka passed. It was like that."

"Odd thing to think about. You looking like a boy hardly out of school, and yet the same age as my father. It's one thing to hear about all one's life, but it's the darndest thing to see. Sorry, no offense." Daisuke shoots him a hesitant smile, and Watanuki waves it off.

"Of course not. It used to seem strange to me too, a long time ago."

The old man hums, strokes his thumb against his chin and muses some more. "Maybe that's what it is. Fellow gets to my age, and the years go by in a blink. But if we were to stay around long as you've managed, it would all be as seasons passing. Five, ten years in the space of a springtime. Another spread of years gone with a summer. Autumn goes by...."

Here he trails off, straightens and blinks. "When was the last winter you recall? If you don't mind me asking."

Watanuki shrugs. "Ah. Well." He's growing accustomed to rummaging through his memory, sorting through events the way he'd had to sift through his recipe collection one very late night after quite a lot of wine, when he'd knocked the card box to the floor, recipes scattering everywhere.

"I remember the winter around Valentines. When Haruka-chan finished her book about Haruka-san. I'd made a chocolate dessert, we talked about your family. She came over tired, but I got to see her laugh by the end. It made me happy, to see that."

"Ah yes, yes I recall that well. Her first book, we were so proud." Daisuke's smile is at first eager and pleased, but then it sticks in an odd shape as he looks at Watanuki. "My word, that was....what, twenty-five years ago?"

"I guess?" says Watanuki, refilling Yuuko's kiseru to stave off a vague creeping embarrassment. To tell the truth, it would take a pencil and paper, his past calendars, and a few conversations with various people for him to pin down the elapsed number of years for sure.

"Well. I can see where you might not want to keep track. I remember when I stopped admitting what year I graduated high school," chuckles Daisuke. "Comes a point when it's just too damned long ago, to fuss over doing the math. Every time you do, you just end up feeling old. That's no good."

"That's true," Watanuki smiles, mostly for the sake of being agreeable.

"Though I daresay you're due for a nice spell of winter again." Daisuke has gone back to his musing, turning a contemplative expression out toward the lawn. "And the New Year, goodness, going twenty-five years without Osechi, that's the best part of the year. Sweeping out the old, welcoming in the new. Life starts and ends with that, y'know."

"Hm," answers Watanuki, half to his guest and half to a vague idea just beginning to make itself known; like the chime of a distant bell, carried on the wind. Osechi. Welcoming a new year. He knows he used to enjoy that.

Daisuke breaks in on the misty hint of a notion, with a sigh. "Ah, this is indeed a pleasant place you keep, here. Shame it took me all this time to come visit. I wouldn't have minded passing a few evenings this way, before. My daughter and grandson always said how nice it was."

"I've been very thankful to have their company here. And I'm certainly glad I got a chance to meet you. I'd always hoped I could."

"Indeed, so did I," nods Daisuke. "And now I regret to say I should get to heading on, before I overstay my welcome."

"So soon?" Watanuki glances off at the perimeter fence with a twinge of disappointment. Nothing seems to have changed around the shop's boundaries, and he can't sense any change imminent, but spirits are most always more sensitive than him to these things.

"I don't suppose you'd have time for a last drink?" he asks, tipping the sake bottle and finding enough for at least another modest cup for each of them.

Daisuke tilts his head in a brief listening pose, and then after a moment, smiles faintly. "If it's not a nuisance, I guess one last toast would be all right. It would be a grand thing, to say I left a fine empty bottle behind me at the end, eh?"

"That's a very good way to go," agrees Watanuki, and pours the last of the sake for each of them, offering the honor of the toast to Doumeki Daisuke.

"Let's drink to our New Year," the old man grins, raising his cup high. "May it come and be good to us both."

 

**

Midmorning the next day, Watanuki answers the telephone.

"I just. Wanted to see if you need anything," a deeply subdued Ryou tells him. "I won't be able to hang out for a few days. Sorry. But Grandfather...."

"It's all right, I know," Watanuki says, touched by the melancholy reminder of the last time he'd had a conversation like this. "Please give your family my condolences. Daisuke-san was a very good man."

"Thanks, I'll--. Wait, you mean you saw him?"  
"He came late last night. I was happy I got to meet him, after all this time."

"But the--. Was he okay? Did he need something?" asks Ryou.  
"He was at peace," Watanuki reassures him. "I think he only wanted a chance for us to talk, and I've wanted that for a long time, too. We shared a few drinks, and then he moved on."

"Oh, that's. Thank you. I'm glad, that he got to see you." Although Ryou doesn't sound glad, he sounds miserable, understandably. And somehow smaller and younger than Watanuki is used to hearing him.

"What about you. Are you doing all right?" he asks.  
"Yeah. I'll be fine. We've just....it's been hard. Grampa was sick, and really unhappy for awhile. And y'know, Mom, she's dealing with all the arrangements right now. But I think she's taking it pretty rough."

"Well. If it would help, you can tell her Daisuke-san is better, now. And she's welcome to come see me," offers Watanuki. "I'd be glad to spend time with both of you."

"Thanks," sighs Ryou. "We're gonna have a ton of people around, until the funeral's over. But I'll tell her. Oh, but did you need anything? I could drop by sometime tonight, probably."

"I can manage all right for a few days," Watanuki says, and then an idea nudges at him. "Though while I'm thinking about it. I know you have more important things on your mind right now. But could I bother you for a favor?"

"Well yeah, of course, anything you need."

Ryou's unhesitating agreement makes him smile a little, and then wonder how foolish his request will actually sound. "It's just something your grandfather mentioned last night. And I wanted to bring it up with someone....in case I forget."

There's a brief silence on Ryou's side, and then an indrawn breath of understanding. "Oh. What is it?"

All this time, they had yet to actually discuss the gaps in Watanuki's memory. At least not beyond Watanuki's assessment of things he did and didn't recall. That alone had been enough to leave Ryou brooding for days, fixing Watanuki with somber looks of concern whenever he thought Watanuki wouldn't notice.

Of course Watanuki couldn't help but notice; he'd felt Ryou's gaze across the room, heavily weighted by their shared knowledge of inevitability as a force stronger than both of them. And perhaps neither of them wanted to voice any fears of what the inevitable might have in store.

Though having spoken with Daisuke, Watanuki sees some hope that his forgetfulness isn't necessarily something to fear. It need not be the same as that harrowing first time, long ago, when all that he forgot simply disappeared, and came close to taking him with it.

"When this winter comes," he says. "I'd like to try and remember it. And the New Year. I want to remember celebrating Osechi. I'm not sure what will keep me from forgetting. It might be too much to ask, I don't know. But maybe if you could remind me?"

"Okay. I'll um. Write it down. That's it, you just want me to remind you?"

Watanuki gives small, embarrassed chuckle. "I guess it must sound silly. I can do all these things for people, but I can't remember New Year's. I feel like I should try, though. I'll make you a sweater or something, for your trouble."

"It's not silly," Ryou answers, in a voice both soft and solemn. "If that's what you want, then I'll do all I can."

**

A short while later, Watanuki is standing out under the gingko tree, facing the empty shaded spot where Daisuke's spirit had ambled away last night, and where his father's spirit had shimmered off like a mirage in the shadows, on a still muggy morning sixty some-odd years ago.

After talking with Ryou he feels humbled and determined, and his quiet words are both to himself, and to whomever might hear him.

"Wherever you've gone, you don't have to worry. I'll do everything I'm able, to keep looking out for them. I'll keep your memory, so they won't forget you. I'll make sure they always know how much you've hoped for them."

 

 

*****


	20. Chapter 20

20.

 

December the fifteenth is a Friday. A day indistinguishable from any of the thousands of Fridays, or the tens of thousands of any other day of the week he's spent in the shop. Still, he duly marks it off on the kitchen calendar, makes breakfast, cleans the kitchen, changes the bed linens, dusts the shop storeroom, takes his lunch, sweeps the front entry, pulls on his coat and rakes leaves outside for awhile, and so on, and so on.

That night he goes to bed, just as on thousands of other nights, and awakens several hours later. Still in his nightclothes, but not in his bed.

There are no walls where he awakens, no ceiling or floor. No temperature or scent to the air. Of course he knows this place, he's been here before; outside of time, and events past, and things yet to come.

He pushes up on one elbow, peering around the blackness for some symbol or hint of what's brought him here.

He doesn't have to wait long; when it comes gliding past him, delicate black wings ringed in a pale luminescence, Watanuki's heart nearly stops then and there.

 

**

"And then you woke up," concludes Ryou, turning the fugu fins on the grill.

"Yeah." The dream had broken before he could grasp anything of it, and Watanuki had awakened in his bed, burdened by an unnameable gloom. Getting through the day had taken considerable effort, with this heaviness on his shoulders, in his chest and limbs. Ryou noticed it the moment he'd come through the door with the groceries, and had been hovering watchfully more or less ever since.

Telling the dream to Ryou relieves him somewhat. And the hirezake helps too, with a delicious kick of warmth that makes him smile.

Still, when Ryou mentions he's free to stay the night, Watanuki can't find it in him to turn down the company. And when it's late, and they're each laying in their adjacent beds, staring at the ceiling, he knows it would've been harder for them both tonight, lying sleepless alone.

"I know you can't promise," Ryou says quietly, into the darkness. "But if you were ever going to leave. Could you try to say goodbye, first?"

Watanuki rolls over to face him, sees only shadows layered over black and dark gray. If he lays very still, he can hear Ryou breathing.

"It was just a dream. About someone else's dream. I've learned enough not to get lost in something like that."

"I know. And I know I don't have to tell you to be careful. But I can't do anything else. So just...."

"It's okay, I understand. I'll be careful."

**

Watanuki will remember Christmas as the day Ryou came in wearing the most absurd droopy red hat with fuzzy white trim, pulling behind him a child's red wagon piled up with pine boughs and shiny ornaments of all sorts.

"Surely it's against the rules, somewhere, to harass Shopkeepers with a mess like this," he mutters, even as he's strewing greenery about the place, with Ryou following behind, adding silvery tinsel.  
"I thought about bringing a tree," Ryou answers placidly. "But that might've been conspicuous. Dragging it down the sidewalk."

Watanuki stiffens at the thought. "Oh my god, this tinsel sticks to _everything_."  
"Stand still a second," says Ryou, dropping the red hat on Watanuki's head, and pulling out a small camera from his pocket.

"What? No photos, have you lost your mind?" Watanuki reaches to snatch the hat off, but Ryou gets an arm firmly around his shoulders, holding the camera out at arm's length, pointed at the both of them.

"You said you want to remember. And I want a picture of us. It's a fair exchange," he tells Watanuki, and then snaps off a shot while Watanuki is still working out the logic.

Watanuki will remember the New Year partly for the celebration, with all the food and Ryou bringing his mother and siblings for a visit; and partly because it's a week after Christmas and he's still picking strands of tinsel and pine needles out of odd spots around the shop.

 

And then he has the dream again, that butterfly floating just out of reach in the black emptiness, and thinks he might have been fated to remember this winter anyway.

 

**

When the dream comes the third time, he pushes up to stand in the darkness, thinking to seek out whatever message he's being teased with. But when he comes to around noon the next day, groggy and out of sorts, he's still as clueless as before.

He probably shouldn't have called Ryou when he was vexed, but cooking is generally the best way to get his mind off his problems, and in order to cook he needs ingredients.

"If you're coming by, could you pick up some konnyaku on the way? And some bean sprouts, and garlic."

"Konnyaku."

"Yes. Not kabocha, or konbu, or kinako. Please don't sneak any substitutes in this time. Konn-ya-ku, write it down if you have to."

"Okay. You don't have to get tense about it."  
"I'm not tense, I'm just on to your tricks by now. Every time I ask for konnyaku, you bring something else, and I have to make a dish I didn't plan for."

"Is something wrong?"  
"No, and don't change the subject. Just bring the konnyaku, okay?"

"You had that dream again, didn't you."

Watanuki grips his forehead, and then reflects that it's both ungracious and undignified to snarl at Ryou just for understanding him too well. With Shizuka it had been all right, since at least half the time, Shizuka had been aiming to get snarled at. But Ryou, for all his maddeningly inarguable perceptiveness, isn't the same.

"Fine, yes, I had that dream again. Bring what I asked for, and I'll tell you about it."

**

"You asked but you didn't get an answer. And then you woke up." Ryou recites this halfway through Watanuki's telling of the fourth dream, reminding Watanuki that sometimes, being in the company of a born fortuneteller can be truly exasperating.

Though he's also wise enough to let it go, realizing that it's the dream getting under his skin, not Ryou.

"What are you going to do next?" Ryou asks.

It's March. Four months this dream has chased him down, while he has done little but wait on it to give him an answer. And little wonder it's getting under his skin; besides the very obvious thing that cryptic butterfly _could_ mean, what is undeniably bearing down on him in the dream's persistence is Change.

Yes, Watanuki made a promise. Yes, he is bound body and soul to this shop, and yes that choice has superseded any of the myriad other possibilities for where his life might have led. Including the one particular possibility that has stayed by his side for over two decades, shared meals with him, brought him puzzles and books and groceries, word of the outside world and Christmas tinsel stuck in the cracks of the tatami.

And maybe that possibility has been arrested by his choice, from coming fully into its own. But even what he has now, feels like so much more than he can afford to lose. If change comes to take that away, then what is left for him? What will he be without it?

On the other hand, he soon realizes, if he can't bring himself to face change, then he is nothing but a hostage to a promise that can never be fulfilled. He'd be both a prisoner for life and his own jailer, and all his decades of loneliness, every loss, every deferral, would have been for nothing.

And so he does the only thing he can. When the dream next comes, he stands up and takes hold of it, capturing the butterfly to unlock its secrets.

**

The butterfly is Yuuko.

And when Watanuki starts awake in the gray chill of dawn, he is shaken, haunted, seventeen years old again and broken to pieces by loss, smothered by the desperate grief in his throat and the thousand questions she will never answer for him.

His face feels tight from dried tears, but he hasn't wept yet, it's only the memory of the tears that coursed down his cheeks, that night when he yelled his throat raw ( _ **You're here right in front of me! I can speak to you! There has to be some kind of way!**_ ) because he couldn't move, he couldn't grasp her to make her stay, all he'd had was his voice and his agonized terror at losing his only guidance, his only hope, the only steady axis of his world.

It is a terrible thing to live as long as he has, and still be thrown helpless to his knees by a single memory. And he feels no better when he discovers that the day has passed in a haze, that he has thought of nothing but that night and that damned dream, and now evening is coming on and all he's done is sit in his bedroom and smoke.

He does not once think of Ryou, until Ryou appears in the bedroom doorway, frowning in.

For a long while all they do is stare at each other. Watanuki sitting on the floor in his rumpled bedclothes, eyes bloodshot from smoke and old pain, and Ryou half-propped against the doorjamb, gaze trained on Watanuki in a distant sort of way, just as if Watanuki were in a boat, floating ever further from the shore.

Watanuki feels ashamed, and adrift, and for the first time ever, he wonders just what in the hell he's really been waiting for.

"You mind if I make some tea?" Ryou finally asks. Just as patient and solid as he's always been. As Shizuka and Haruka, and all those who had cared for Watanuki had always been.

They had never asked what Watanuki expected to have, at the end of his waiting. They simply looked out for him, supported him, uncomplaining.

"Sure, go ahead," he says. His throat feels like a gravel bed, the inside of his chest a swollen bruise, and something about Ryou's quiet, down-to-earth devotion is making him hate himself a little. "I'll be in after I wash."

**

"Has Yuuko-san ever appeared in your dreams, before now?"

"No..." He can no longer sit back and wait on this dream. Whatever change is coming, he has to stand up and face it. For his own sake, and the sake of this man who's spent more than half his life, steadfast at Watanuki's side.

Here, tonight, in this moment, he doesn't feel remotely ready for the reckoning looming up ahead. For all that he's been through, all that he's learned, endured, and struggled over, there is a part of him which may always be that shattered boy, crying out the most brash, impossible, life-altering promise. Binding time itself, out of the sheer force of his pain.

He has never, not once in more than a century, looked beyond that moment. He's never imagined a future beyond living that promise. Never conceived a life where his wish was granted.

But now the terms are changing. All the calendar months lost from his recollection, they were a symptom. He is drifting apart from the world he once lived in, belonged to. Moving further toward a day when the gates of the shop no longer lead to that world.

What would become of him, then? Or to put it more accurately, what manner of thing would he become, without a connection to his world? Without the people who have been dear to him, who have helped him remain someone he can recognize; a human, with a human's heart, not just a title, or a mantle, or some powerful mystic lynchpin in fate's machinery.

He may not know where this dream is leading him, but he knows this much: the time is coming for him to choose where he will stand.

"I have to strain all my techniques," he tells Ryou. "So I can see the rest of that dream."

**

When he finally heads in for bed that night, he sees that Ryou has laid out their futons together, without the customary space between, and appears fast asleep on one side. Watanuki approaches this new development cautiously, wondering if this is worth waking Ryou up for a discussion over. But then kneeling next to his futon, he sees that even in sleep, his companion looks tired and careworn, with the worry lines still present across his brow, and at the downturned corners of his mouth.

Watanuki can't apologize for that. He can't do anything to mitigate the painful, worrisome nature of his life, because it's his _life_ ; it's not as if he's surrounded by better choices. Ryou knows this. Everyone who has known Watanuki since he took over the shop knew it.

Which is why Ryou is holding on, he realizes. Keeping close to Watanuki, in any way he can think of. Aware that any day now, their familiar status quo and all their years of friendship, all that has passed and been treasured between them, might well face a sudden end.

The chill of that thought is enough to urge Watanuki into his bed, sliding quietly as possible beneath the blankets, suppressing his shivers. He thinks he's settled in undetected, until Ryou sleepily clears his throat.

"Mmyou're not mad?" he mumbles; Watanuki can only assume he's asking about their beds.

"No. It's fine. I didn't mean to wake you up." He burrows down in the blankets, feeling this arrangement is far, far preferable to lying sleepless alone, with nothing but the end of the world to think about.

"Not much I can do. B'sides not leave you alone." For all that it sounds like sleeptalk, Ryou is following Watanuki's thoughts uncomfortably well.

Watanuki thinks he ought to say something comforting or profound at this point, but all he can think of is the truth. "I've never considered, in all this time, what I'd do if she came back. It's like. Maybe I never really expected it?"

There's a long silence, and when Ryou speaks again he sounds more awake. "Are you expecting it now?"

Watanuki rolls to his side, pulls the covers up to his chin. He can just make out Ryou's profile in the darkness. "I don't know. I would think I'd be more....happy. If I did."

Once again, quiet descends. Then just when Watanuki thinks he's dozed off, Ryou sighs.

"I used to get angry. When I figured out you'd never really had a choice. About where to live. I'd get so mad, thinking about it. How unfair it was. And how there was really nobody to be mad _at_. You were just too much for the world to make room for."

Watanuki chuckles humorlessly. "That's not a bad way to put it. Nicer than some ways I used to think of it. But there's really no such thing as fair. Just hitsuzen, and balance."

"I know." He rolls toward Watanuki, curling one hand in the space between their pillows. "But you still shouldn't be locked out of our world. It doesn't matter how you got there, or the things you could do to it. It's still your world. You had your life there. You still belong to it."

In all his long life no one had ever told Watanuki, so simply and directly, that he _belonged_. It was the one thing he had always wondered, always doubted, so much that even now, part of him wants to warn Ryou that it might not be true. Maybe he was nothing but someone's dream; an unexpected outcome of a powerful wish, dropped into the world from nowhere. No one still alive could know for sure.

But Ryou believes, heart and soul, Watanuki had heard it in his voice. So he reaches for Ryou's hand between them, clasping it, wondering if that willful, stubborn Doumeki faith could be enough for them both.

"When did you become so wise?" he smiles.

"I have a friend, who's really important. And I've always tried to remember everything he's said. So I can be ready to help him, if he needs it."

 

They drift off to sleep that night, holding hands.

Some hours later, Watanuki stirs vaguely awake, aware of an unaccustomed warm presence at his back, and a warm heavy arm tucked over his chest.

A memory emerges from so many years ago, like a faded photograph; when he'd stood and watched a couple sleeping twined together, content and tucked away safe from all the world.

He knows that finally, he understands that peace. And in the moments before his thoughts dissolve back into darkness, he entertains the fleeting selfish fantasy, that as long as he could keep this, he would never need to dream again.

*****


End file.
